Trares
It doesn’t take much to make me feel old these days.
Rolling out of bed results in the popcorn staccato of my joints and bones. Random aches pop up from what seems like thin air during the day. My morning runs are harder and harder to bounce back from.
But nothing has made me feel more like an ancient relic than question after question from Anthony.
At 42 years old, life has changed immensely since I was born — particularly when it comes to technology. When I was a kid, the pinnacle of entertainment was our Nintendo system, getting Mario to try and save the princess or blasting birds from the sky in “Duck Hunt.”
Our family TV only got a handful of channels as a kid, we didn’t get a VCR until I was well into grade school, and we got our first personal computer when I was in sixth grade.
Even when I was in college in the early 2000s, if we wanted to ask someone a question or make plans to meet up, we had to use a landlines. Only a handful of people had cell phones.
Anthony couldn’t believe any of this.
Take, for instance, the time he was playing his school iPad, doing some educational game that they had been working on in class earlier. He paused for a second, then asked, “Daddy, did you have an iPad in school when you were a kid?”
I had to explain to him that no, iPads weren’t invented when I was a kid. Or a teenager. Or an adult in my 20s. Instead, all of our school assignments were done on worksheets. Some of them were even done before on something called a ditto machine.
“Whaaaaaat!” Anthony exclaimed, flabbergasted that I even knew how to read without an iPad.
Another time, we were watching funny YouTube videos on the TV. He loves to see tutorials on “Minecraft,” with famous streamers cracking jokes and putting his characters in ridiculous situations.
Again, he asked what I used to watch on YouTube when I was a kid. I had to explain that the video streaming site was only about 15 years old, well after I had graduated from college. If we wanted to watch a funny video, we had to wait to rent one from the local Blockbuster.
“What’s a Blockbuster?” he asked.
I realize that this all makes me sound like I truly am ancient — basically the living embodiment of Abe Simpson yelling at a cloud. I also realize that if Anthony thought I was lame before, this isn’t improving that standing.
But every time he asks, I also have to smile. As quickly as technology evolves and advances, the current trends will be obsolete faster and faster. Anthony is going to have to adapt much more quickly than I ever have.
He will do fine, as every young person does with tech. But the time will come when he’ll feel behind the times.
And he can join me and all of the other dinosaurs.
Ryan Trares is a senior reporter and columnist for the Daily Journal. Send comments to [email protected].
