“Being an 80s child & why today’s youth never had it so good” brings back sweet memories of my youth. Hence, I’ve come up with my own version of the 70’s child. (yes I am that old. High School in 1970 and college in 1974).
We didn’t have Oculus Virtual Reality headsets, PlayStation, Nintendo 64, X boxes, video games, cable TV with over 100 channels, VCR’s, surround sound, cellular phones, computers, online chatrooms.
Instead we had…
1. Dance parties that started at 4:00 PM because martial law imposed a curfew at 12:00 midnight. A permit was required whenever there were more than 5 guests.
Listen to the podcast version:
2. Portable typewriter instead of a laptop. When you made a typing error, you had to use a correction fluid . No delete buttons. And you had to have your content ready before typing.
3. Four TV channels: Channel 3, Channel 7 and Channel 9 and Channel 13.
4. No call waiting. No direct dialing. One time, I had the shock of my life when an operator rudely interrupted a telephone conversation with my suitor because of an incoming long distance call.
5. No Automated Teller machines. Since I resided at a dormitory in the UP campus, my allowance was sent through telegraphic transfer. Queuing at PNB for 30 minutes or so was not fun at all.
7. No email. I wrote letters to my siblings with a pen, of course, and rode a jeepney to drop my letter at the post office. Often it takes a week for our letter to arrive. If we wanted instant messaging, we had to use the telegram such as RCPI.
8. No World Wide Web. Research had to be done in the library. And nope, there were no search engines. One needed to be proficient in the Dewey Decimal Classification System and use the card catalog to get the right book.
9. No bottled water. I drank water from the faucet or from a hose in the backyard.
10. No portable music player. No Napster. No. torrents. No MP3 ‘s. No IPod. No Spotify, Apple Music. No podcasts. Vinyl records and cassette tapes were so cool. I brought my friends over to the house to groove with the music and dance along with the music- 12 steps (not the 12-step program, duh), LA walk, the Swing.
12. No USB flash drives. No CD’s or floppy disk either. Instead, we used cassette tapes to store computer data. If the tape got torn, you splice it.
13. No computer schools. I did my own self-study on BASIC programming .
14. Groovy . Not astig.
(I will add more when I remember something. )
To the children of this decade: I hope you take advantage of the new technologies to enhance your God-given talents. You never had it so good.
Photo via pxleyes.com
