cell phones and such

This afternoon at lunch time, my kids spent a good deal of time trying to wrap their heads around how old and how stupid us "old people" are. They were telling each other that back when I was a kid, that "phones were just nailed to the wall" and "that they didn't even know that they could just unplug them and take them with them." It was also discussed that we didn't even have computers. That isn't entirely true, though; I think I was in 4Th or 5Th grade when we got the world's first computer at Arlington Grade School. It was really exciting at first, but the polish sort of wore off when it just sat there in the hallway for a couple years until Jon Trembley figured out how to turn it on. Then a year after that, the eight-graders made a program that let you vote on who was going to be president. All the students filed by our single computer and pressed either "y" or "n", then at the end of the day, it gave us the results. Whoa, soooo amazing; how we were impressed when Reagan really did win the election, just as our green glowing computer prophesied.

But then we also were permitted to get out and drag the limbs off the road when they fell down in the way of the school bus, and sometimes I was allowed to divvy out corporal punishment to younger kids that badly needed it. That is maybe the beginning of my "social obligation" spoken of in the Walmart Post in the archives. There was one bus driver that seemed to love it when you got up out of your seat and into the aisle: he would just lock up the brakes and send you flying. My bus driver would threaten me by raising an eyebrow while reaching for, then shaking at me (what seemed like at the time) a 48 oz. ball peen hammer while looking you in the eye through the big mirror. It was enough to keep me in check, but he informed me later that he used it to check air pressure on the inside tires of rear dually. Well, duh, sure, when I think about it, now... but could you imagine a bus driver waving a hammer in a threatening way now at kids? They would shoot him on the site (well, actually that would be way too violent; more likely they would prop his eyelids open and show him repetitive pictures of violence and make him listen to L. V. Beethoven very loudly like in "A Clockwork Orange") Anyway, that's probably enough reminiscing about the "old days" from someone only 33 years old. Maybe more on this later, though.