Something my sister told me set me to thinking about how fast the world’s changing.
Her oldest grandson, all of fourteen, is full blown into girls. He attended a dance recently with his girl friend recently and they broke up shortly thereafter. The reason: she’d never had a boyfriend that wanted to talk on the phone so much. She’d rather just text back and forth.
Say what!
There”s so much around these days that wasn’t available when I was a kid: computers, cell phones, cable TV or dish, video game systems, multi-screen theaters . The list goes on and on.
When I was a child, we had four channels on TV. Computers were in their infant stage. Hell, I remember when Pong was a big deal. The phone was a party line. For those youthful, that means several different families shared the same line. If, as I did, you had gabby neighbors, they’d keep the phone tied up for hours.
Ive thoroughly embraced most new technologies(well, I;m still a neophyte on computers, but I’m learning). I have nothing against video game systems(some look interesting). But I don’t care enough to own one(I think Atari is the last one I used: the very earliest models).
I am a reader. Always have been, always will be.
But back to my original thought. Cell phones I’ve never liked. I see people riding down the road all the time gabbing away. I was even behind one couple(they looked like a married couple I’m guessing) where both parties in the vehicle were talking on cells at the same time. That’s very dangerous of course. I often wonder what people like that did before cell phones were developed. They seem incapable of being out of touch for even a few minutes. I just don’t get it.
I like that solitariness of not being able to be found if you don’t want to be. Sometimes I don’t answer my landline if I’m not in a mood to talk. I own a disposable cell that I carry when I’m on the road to have in case of emergencies. But it’s turned off unless I need it.
Back when cell came in to widespread use, the worry was that people would lose the art of face-to-face conversation. Now, are young folks evolving into text-messaging instead of talking? It seems ridiculous on the face of it. But most young people are growing up these days with all this technology as a matter of fact. They’ve never known anything different.
What does this hold for the future? Am I an old fuddy-duddy?
Not The Baseball Pitcher 