As I scroll through Facebook, I find far more targeted ads and obscure pages littering my feed than in years past. I guess Mr. Zuckerberg isn’t too happy being a billionaire, it seems he’s aiming for trillionaire status. Sad, but true.
Every now and then, however, a little something slips through the endless stream of debris that amuses me. While I rarely engage with these posts, I enjoy taking a moment to calculate my score or reflect on what I’ve seen or done.
After a couple of months of more serious and reflective written pieces, I figured we should have a little fun.
Let’s play
You might be old if… (1 point for everything you’ve done).
In the spirit of expediency, I’m going to group some of them together.
Communication
✅ Used a rotary phone, used a phonebook, and uncurled a telephone cord.
Who remembers the good old rotary phone? That quick swish of a finger as you pulled down the number until it hit the metal stopper, then the long wait as the plastic dial made its arduous journey back from whence it came. Did anyone else have to answer the phone by repeating the house number and your name? “548–2305, Vanessa speaking.” Just me?
If you want a laugh, watch this video of two seventeen-year-olds trying to figure out how they work.
✅ Used a typewriter and owned a dictionary.
Does an old-fashioned typewriter bring inky fingers to mind? I recall righting the red and black ribbon after it got all discombobulated as I pounded out my thoughts and feelings on a crisp sheet of white paper.
Technology progressed to the electric typewriter bringing with it the glorious relief of softer keystrokes, including a built-in back button that auto-whited out any mistakes.
Could life get any better than this? Apparently, it could…
Computers
✅ Played an Atari.
As Atari was not available in 80s South Africa, we upgraded from Pong to the latest game console: the ZX Spectrum. Games like Penetrator — yes, I too am astounded that this name slipped past the censors — Adventure A: Planet of Death, and Hungry Horace — which was a glorified version of Pacman — entertained us for hours on end. No matter how futile his mission, I desperately wanted to help Horace get full.
Did you also find yourself playing a text-based game at some point in your youth? Were you totally captivated by the ugly pixelated fonts that filled the TV screen with instructions to follow?
✅ Used a floppy disc.
At nineteen I bought my first computer, and to be honest, it was nothing more than a very expensive game console. I moved my family up from the ZX Spectrum, which had been retired for quite some years, to DOS-based games on stiffy discs. Those 3.5-inch marvels of modern technology could hold a whopping 1.44 megabytes.
Through gog.com I have satiated my desire to revisit my 90s addictions and was able to purchase Crystal Caves and Secret Agent, which I played in any given waking moment during my teen years. Was there anything more satisfying than inserting one of those black squares into the slot on your tower and locking it into place, knowing the excitement that was about to befall you?
I used the 5.25-inch floppy discs, which at their peak could hold quite a significant 1.2 megabytes, to save poetry I created in the word processing software that came with my Windows 3.1 operating system — an outlet for my tortured teenage angst!
I gotta ask. Stiffy and floppy? Really 1990s? Could we get any more phallic?
✅Had a Myspace account, had an AOL address, and accessed the internet via dial-up.
As AOL was mainly a North American thing, we all settled for a Yahoo! address down in the South. Waiting for the beeps, zings, and dings to complete their mission seemed never-ending as I sat poised on the edge of my chair eager to see if I was the lucky recipient of some new electronic communication.
Music
✅ Owned a Walkman, made a mixed tape, and listened to music on a boombox.
Remember the Top 40 on a Saturday morning? It was a weekend ritual to sit by the boombox awaiting the opening bars of a favourite song, our fingers moving at the speed of light to press down on the record button, trying to miss the DJ's introduction for a ‘purer’ version of the tune. The latest mixed tape would play on an endless loop in our state-of-the-art Sony Walkman.
For some bizarre reason, we were desperate to hear that Robert De Niro was waiting, talking Italian, or that we needed to wake George Michael up before we “go-go.” Has anyone figured out what a Karma Chameleon is? Regardless of the meaning, that song still makes me boogie whenever I hear it.
Oh, and let’s not forget using a pencil to wind the tape back into the cassette when the boombox decided to snack on our favourite compilations!
✅ Listened to music on a CD and ordered from Columbia House.
What an upgrade from cassette tapes to CDs. The clear sounds soaring through the air and kissing our cochlea. No turning the cassette tape or LP over as the shiny disc spun.
As I lived in the US for a year when I was twenty-one, I was indeed able to order from Columbia House. Ten CDs for a penny? Are you kidding me? Who wouldn't be pulled in by that deal?
Columbia house allowed my CD collection to grow at a faster rate than my thighs!
Video & Film
✅ Watched a movie on VHS and rented a movie from Blockbuster.
“Please be kind, rewind!” was the slogan that could make your toes go cold as you realized you’d forgotten to do so when returning a video to the store. You knew at that moment that you were about to lose precious pocket money as punishment.
Did anyone else spend hours trying to get the VCR to release a tape it was busy chewing? How about throwing a temper tantrum after someone had carelessly recorded over something you wanted to keep followed by a serious argument about popping those darned tabs out?
✅ Taken pics with a film camera.
Oh, that satisfying click as the last picture was taken, and then the hum of the mechanism rolling the film back into its round plastic container. The waiting was torture as our fingers itched to yank the neat little cylinder out of the camera before hurrying to the photo store for processing. Who else dreaded the endless three or four-day wait to get the pictures back?
I was particularly ecstatic when one-hour developing became a thing.
Thankfully, due to the expense of developing rolls and rolls of film, there is not as much photographic evidence of our delinquent behaviours as there is for them young ‘uns today!
School, Business & Life
✅ Learned cursive and used an encyclopedia.
One by one, my parents invested in the A-Z encyclopedia which sat on the bottom shelf of the dark wooden unit in the family room for decades. Every school assignment was met with the sound of pages being turned in the heavy blue volumes. Voices rang out as friends came by to use the tomes for their own homework.
Teachers must have been dead bored reading the same facts over and over again!
And don’t even get me started on cursive — an evil form of writing that accompanied inked fingers and refilled fountain pens.
✅ Sent or received a fax and written a cheque.
Yes, and yes! I was so proud of my first bank account and subsequent chequebook. I became a “grownup” overnight as I scribbled my signature with care, making sure it looked exact so the bank would pay it out a few days later.
✅ Sent a postcard and used a paper map.
This one made me chuckle — I sent a bunch of postcards to friends in Canada a few months ago.
In the glovebox of my father’s car (which I am currently driving), there are plenty of paper maps. While I haven’t consulted one in decades, they remain scattered throughout my mother’s home bringing on memories of map books balanced on my thighs as I tried not to crash into the nearest telephone pole while figuring out where I was going.
Those of us over forty have lived through what could arguably be considered the biggest technological revolution in history. If I sit and think about it, I’m amazed at how far we’ve come over the last thirty years. From the red rotary phone in my home when I was nineteen to the Samsung smartphone I slip into my pocket now, we have come a long way in thirty years.
That old contraption with the twisted cord may feel completely inept if it found out that my current phone can book a flight to anywhere in the world, manage my finances, or allow me to watch a volcano erupt in real-time thousands of miles away — that’s some amazing progress.
It makes me wonder what the world of technology will look like thirty years from now.
At the risk of sounding like an old woman, I wouldn’t give up my childhood of saving up to buy a record, renting video tapes, sitting around listening to stories on cassette tapes borrowed from the local library or waiting in anticipation for my camera film to be developed to see what amazing memories I had captured.
Don’t get me wrong, the convenience of modern technology is wonderful and I would be lost without it now, but every so often it’s fun to wander down memory lane to a time when analogue was king.
Please feel free to buy me a coffee if you like what you read.