I've been thinking a lot lately how different Noah's childhood and growing up will be from mine. When I was six I know I couldn't use a computer. Did we even have one? Did most people have one? I really don't know. Noah knows how to log in to the computer, open the internet, and find his favorite websites. He likes reading eggs, Disney and now we watch Santa's Reindeer here.
When Joey got a new lap top we set his old one up so that it would be kid friendly for Noah. When Joey got a new iPhone we gave Noah Joey's old one. Don't worry it doesn't work. All he can do is play games on it. I don't know how old he will be when I let him have an actual working phone. I was 16. I'm sure once he starts doing after school activities and spends more time at friends house I'll want him to have one so that I can reach him or he can reach me. But we aren't there yet.
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At the library one day I realized that Noah will never know what a card catalog is. He knows we search for books on the computer. I can remember walking up to the giant square full of tiny boxes that pulled WAY out. Each box was filled with tons of tiny cards. I'd flip through them until I found what I was looking for and write it down on a spare piece of paper with a teeny tiny library pencil.
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He will never know the agonizing wait and annoying sound the computer makes when trying desperately to connect to the internet. He'll never click a link and then go grab a snack while he waits for it to load. You click and MOST of the time are rewarded immediately with a new web page. I get angry when the computer doesn't do what I want it to do RIGHT AWAY! I think it's funny that it used to be no big deal for me to sit patiently and wait as my pages loaded ever so slowly.
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I used to have so much fun when my mom would take us to the video store on a Friday night and let each of us pick a movie. I'd stroll the aisles searching for the perfect movie often finding something I had never even heard of before. Noah went to a video store a few times but he was very young and doesn't remember going. Now you get your movies from a redbox standing in the cold or rent them online and wait for them to arrive...
I guess things have always changed and they always will. My childhood was not like my mom's childhood. Noah's children will have an experience different from his. I can't imagine how different things will be by then...
I guess things have always changed and they always will. My childhood was not like my mom's childhood. Noah's children will have an experience different from his. I can't imagine how different things will be by then...
This is a great post! I never think my childhood was that long ago (I'm only 24!) but there are things like dial-up that when we have kids will not even be common vocab. Just something people look back on and remember like landlines. I, too, was 16 when I got my first cell phone so it is just crazy to me to see 10 year olds who think they are entitled to such things.
ReplyDeleteI can't even begin to wonder how different things will be when my husband and I get around to having kids in 4 or 5 years.
Oh man, so true! My concern is that books will eventually become obsolete and everything will be on Kindles and iPads.
ReplyDeleteAlso, you know when you're saving a document on Word and you click the little save icon...it's a little floppy disk. Our kids will never know what that icon really is. Pretty soon, they'll change that icon to an SD card or a flash drive.
AND you know company phone numbers who spell something in the number like 1800-VALUE or whatever. Well, now that we all have cell phones, how are they going to ever figure out that number?
Interesting, right?
OMG Blockbuster! I totally remember having sooo much fun going there with my parents and crossing my fingers that the movie I wanted was available! Thanks for the walk down memory lane :)
ReplyDeleteThis is so true, and I think of this all the time! My childhood was somewhere in between yours and Noah's. I remember library catalogues, but barely. I loved Blockbuster and had LOTS of great girls' nights renting movies from there, but all before the age of like 12. I learned how to use a computer around that age as well, so not TOO young but not too old either. It's CRAZY how times change. I'm sure when Noah is our age, he'll be saying the same thing about his childhood compared to HIS kids!
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