How Did We Survive?

When I was a kid this is how I was punished

Remember the days when there weren't any school buses and it snowed all the time? And instead of living right next to the school your grandparents decided to live at the bottom of a hill about 10 miles away?  Why would they do that to my parents?

They must have had it so rough.

When I was a kid they invented school buses and everyone decided to live on flat ground. While it did snow a little bit, thanks to global climate change more often than not we didn't have to worry about slogging through the snow to get to school.  But we didn't have computers and all the various video games.  I had no phone that I could put in my pocket and text my friends.  If I wanted to get in touch with them I had to call the operator and have them patch me through.  Or I had to send a smoke signal to let them know that I wanted them to come over and play.

We had it rough.

Kids today have everything at their fingertips and don't even have to get off the couch to watch a movie.  They can just dial it up on their iPods and stream it to our giant TV that hangs on the wall.  When I was a kid our TV acted as a piece of furniture.  It was built into a wooden box.  If we wanted a movie we all hopped into the back of our station wagon and went to the video store.  That took at least 10 minutes. 10 FREAKING MINUTES... can you even imagine?  And if we didn't rewind that movie they charged us something like two dollars. Two whole dollars.  Thats like two songs on iTunes.

How did we survive?

I can only imagine what my kids will talk about with their kids.  Fast forward 30 years and my kids will think that THEY had it rough because it took them two hours to fly to Florida (when my grandparents were kids it took about a month in their covered wagon to go that far).  Kids in 30 years will be able to get there in the amount of time it takes to walk down the block nowadays. They will also complain that they would sometimes lose their wifi connection... the horror!  

Can you even imagine how rough my kids will think their childhood was? The worst thing about their lives is that they won't have any good stories about how hard life was when they were young.

What will be the equivalent of walking through snow to school in 30, 60, or 90 years?

John Willey - Daddy's in Charge?

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