A History Lesson

We all remember fondly our parents’ and grandparents’ history lessons, don’t we? I mean the lessons like: When I was your age, we walked three miles to school through a foot of snow. (You almost expected that to be followed by: even in summer!) Why do you need such a big place? When your mother and I got married we lived in a closet in your grandparents’ basement. (A closet, really? I guess they never exaggerated in the old days.)

The history varied according to the subject at hand. When it came to the price of food, we all heard things like: I remember when we used to get a loaf of bread for five cents. Or when the subject was gas, it cost 25 cents a gallon back then. We rolled our eyes and wondered why older folks felt it was necessary to make such remarks. Of course, more things change more they remain the same.

Recently, as I was talking about The Beatles with one of my sons, my grandson took his attention away from the video game he was playing long enough to comment that he had learned all about beetles at school the day before. I realized that my history is quite different than that of my grandchildren. Like my parents I remember walking to school and I also remember buying a loaf of bread for less than a dollar.

With all the changes we see today, I wonder what my grandchildren will one day tell their children and their grandchildren. While we might say that we remember a time when there was no computers or cell phones, our grandchildren are more likely to reminisce about the newest gadgets now on the market and those which will soon be appearing, like the glasses that connect you directly to the Internet so you can secretly be online while walking in a crowd or while talking to people. With these glasses, presumably, a keyboard will not be necessary as you will be able to dictate emails. Will that mean that people will be going around talking out loud, but not talking to each other directly? As one journalist wrote: You will be able to make visual phone calls and see the other person in your glasses while cycling – or crashing!

Then again, as technology becomes “out there” people may simply choose to tune out altogether. That may mean that our grandchildren will reminisce about the time when they decided to go back to the day when people talked to each other. What a concept!