Modern Technology ?!!!

just got off the internet...DANG it's hard sometimes. I was chatting with one of my cousins via Facebook. She is probably in her mid fifties, me approaching my fifties more quickly than I planned.

We chatted about her mom (my aunt) and about a funeral for a close family friend that I had attended recently.

When I finally typed that I had to get offline to go finish cleaning the kitchen, it struck me ! When I was a kid in the late sixties, you could have told me I would be living on Mars by now before I would believe the advances that we have ACTUALLY made.

When I was a kid, modern technology was "ATARI" and the game "Pong". We would play it on our black and white TV set for hours, mesmerized by the way we seemed to be really playing a game of tennis by holding a bulky controller and punching a button.

When my dad bought a car with electric windows, I thought we were millionaires. Actually the car was a station wagon and the only window that was electric was the back tailgate window. He brought it home the day before we left on vacation. We showed it off to all our friends in the neighborhood...time and time again.

When we all got up at 4:30 AM to leave for Florida, the station wagon's engine couldn't even offer a groan...we kids had drained the battery completely. We all got out to push the wagon off to jump start it...much to my Dad's anger and dismay. But HEY..we got to Florida didn't we?

I remember when phones switched from rotary to push button... Of course we were last in line to get this new fangled phone. I was so jealous when I would go to one of my friend's house and they whizzed in a number and were connected before my own home phone would still be ticking off the rotary clicks and we would be left waiting for the dial to slowly tick back around. (Think how Opie felt when he had to pick up the phone and ask Sarah to connect him to the Sheriff's office in Mayberry)...that is the way I felt...we were living in the Fintstone years when everyone else was zooming along in the Jetson years.

When we got a dishwasher installed, I thought that we were "Moving on up"!! When we finally got a car with air conditioning I just knew my Dad had "Made it"!!

In my house as a kid, the stereo was a piece of furniture almost as big as a couch. It played records...78's 45's or the newest craze...albums.

That crazy new wave of eight track tapes hit first, followed by the amazing cassette tape era.

I had switched from my standard transistor radio (Skinny Bobby Harper on Quixie) to stereo listening... when I bought my first "Real" stereo, I bought Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon and was amazed how the sound bounced from speaker to speaker. I thought that we were at our technology peak.

I sit here now wondering how we have zoomed through the years and found ourselves in this new world...typing, texting and tweeting...for the love of me I can't imagine how my obit will read...to post your condolences...please switch to this hyper link to phase in your remarks..."someone beam me up" because I feel like I am "WAY" in over my old fashioned head.

Little did I know ... thirty years later I would sit at a keyboard and connect with friends in Kuwait, friends all over the U.S. and find friends I haven't heard from in years. Little did I know that I would have a blog that I hear comments on from people in the U.K. people in New York and people that I never knew existed.

How do we get from electric car windows to this cyber world that seems to almost reach out and touch you with a few simple pecks on a keyboard?