Thursday, November 6, 2008

When I Was a Kid


I am the only biological child between my dad and my mom, however both my dad and mom have remarried and had half children (well, not half children, that would be weird) what I mean is they've had children who are half siblings to me.Aaron, my brother on my mom's side has recently come to live with us. He's a great kid, funny and incredibly gifted in conversation.
I was 16 when Aaron was born, and because I was pretty young when my daughter was born, he's only 3 years older than her. Yet even so, he's convinced that he and I are from the same generation. I thought I'd just spend a little time on nostalgia lane with you, on why he and I are not from the same generation.


1. I did not have the internet or cell phones when I was in highschool. If I wanted to be really sneaky about talking to a boy late at night, I would have to run around and turn off all the phone ringers in our house and wait until my "swatch watch" phone lit up to see a caller calling. Swatch watch phones were so cool because it had two handsets to speak into...thus you could talk WITH your friend on the same line to the same person, instead of sharing the same receiver. This made prank calling much easier. (we also did not have caller id, until I was in highschool)

2. There were no "Cartoons all day" channels on TV when I was a kid, except for Nickelodeon which ran Pinwheel for about 16 hours a day, which was sort of okay to watch if you were into puppets. The real treat happened during the holidays, when you got to watch Charlie Brown cartoons at night!! And if you wanted to change the channel, you would need to use the kind that had a limited distance cord and punch buttons that looked like blender controls. You could stretch it all the way across the floor to the couch most of the time, but the cord would always get tangled, and it looked really unslightly all wadded up on the coffee table. And while it was stretched out, people would trip on it and it would go flying, and hit your mom's crystal vase and break it and you would yell "STUPID!" to your little brother for not watching where he was going!!
(Speaking of remote controls, I remember the first time we got one for our VCR. We had wood floors and my mom was so concerned that it was going to break if it got dropped, that she actually took a VCR tape box, stuffed with styrofoam, then cut an opening in it for the channel changer to fit into. No kidding, ask her.)


3. TV shows consisted primarly of funny shows about families. Fictitious shows about fictitous families who did funny things. The Cosby's, ThirtySomething, Life Goes On, Family Ties, Cheers, Alf, Roseanne, Who's the Boss....
Now TV is all reality shows and gameshows. It's hard to find a family program that's about anything but that...


Aaron typically scoffs at these suggestions, but it's true- hard to believe that I can remember getting my first CD, VCR, and microwave. I remember video stores before Blockbuster, I can remember when water was not sold in vending machines. I, myself, owned a black and white little tv with one antenae in my room, and I remember having a phone with a really long cord that you could skip rope with, while someone else was talking.
So while we share similar tastes in some music, my dear brother Aaron....we are not, sadly from the same generation. ;o)

1 comment:

bristowmom said...

Hi KC,

Thanks for commenting on my blog, and thank you for saying it's okay for me to read yours - I didn't want you to think I was a cyber-stalker! And yes, you are welcome to read my blog.

I look forward to "getting to know you" via the blogs. Mine used to contain information about me and my family but since I restarted it, it is a blank slate. Over time that will change. Just FYI, I have 2 kids about the ages of yours - 5 and 7. I am, however, MUCH older than you since it looks like you started young while I didn't have my first until I was 38. You remember getting your first CD - I remember shopping in record stores! (For RECORD ALBUMS! Don't even ASK me who!) Love your story about the remote.
~Laura