This morning a dear old friend posted on her Facebook page the first concert she ever went to – and it was with me. KC & the Sunshine Band. I think it was 1975. And it got me to thinking about the old days. Cuz that’s what you do when you….get old-er.
And so I give you, young children, what life was like before the internet.
1. To find a restaurant, we pulled over to a phone booth, grabbed a phone book (if someone hadn’t already ripped it off) put a dime in the machine, dialed the restaurant and asked for directions. Which means we had to have a pen and paper.
2. We drove to Crystal Ship Records when the new Carole King Tapestry album came out and hoped they still had a copy. If not, we drove to Crystal Ship records again and hoped they had a copy. Rinse and repeat, until they had a copy.
3. On our birthday our mailbox (meaning the physical one at the end of the driveway) was filled with paper birthday cards.
4. If we wanted to make split pea with ham soup we asked our mom for the recipe. She made us re-write it on our own recipe card because she wasn’t about to loan us hers – soup stained as it was.
5. We made sure we were sitting in front of the television on Saturday night at 11:30pm on NBC (one of four channels on your TV) to watch John Belushi on Saturday Night Live. If we missed it, it would be years before we could see it again.
6. We had to read books to do book reports. And the books were made of paper.
7. We had to get up off the couch and flip the record album over.
8. We asked the librarian where the book was in the library that held the information we needed. Like what does this rash mean?
9. We played board games on a board.
10. We went for walks, and sat in restaurants and talked to each other, we didn’t post every moment in time on Facebook – we lived those moments.
And then 38 years later thankfully we could post that moment on Facebook because it brought back some really great memories. Thanks Julie.
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3 comments
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December 18, 2013 at 12:44 pm
Glenn D. Coble
Hey Denise I found you again. Before the internet I wouldn’t be able to publish my life story. Thought you or some of your followers might be interested. I’m already to chapter 4 (no sex, YET) but this is kind of fun. I will be a loyal follower again.
Go to
http://coblememoir.wordpress.com/
August 12, 2014 at 5:16 am
Michael
Very good article.You summed up alot of things..can you imagine kids today using a rotary phone,or a party line.playing a hand held video game where your character is nothing but a LED.my record “heaven” back then was a store called Peaches.you could find any record there.great article…ty
October 20, 2014 at 7:40 pm
The Internet Era | Shleyy's Blog
[…] I think overall the impact computers and internet has had on my life is substantial considering I only lived 6 years of my life without it. So for the last 15 years computers and the Internet have been apart of my daily life and without my laptop today I would be lost. I would probably fail all of my classes and honestly it would be hard to graduate college without a computer and the Internet. So maybe overall it has made society lazier but it has also made my life less stressful and it has made my goals seem more attainable! Here is a link to a article about life before The internet and computers and I really like the Image that goes a long with it! https://denisewymore.wordpress.com/2013/11/23/before-the-internet/ […]