By Patricia McClellan
There are days when I look around at our modern, push-button world and find myself missing the simpler times. Of course, by “simpler,” I mean the days when everything took longer, required more effort, and occasionally involved yelling at somebody through a window.
Take television.
Today, we have sleek little remotes that let us change channel with a simple verbal command. In my day, the household remote control was the youngest child. That was me. If they wanted the channel changed it was my responsibility
I was also the designated antenna rotator.
I still remember standing outside in the evening chill, twisting that clunky metal pole while hollering toward the back door, “HOW’S THAT? Can you see it now? Is Bonanza clear yet?”
And heaven help you if you moved one inch too far. Suddenly, the picture looked like it was being broadcast from Mars.
Once we finally got the television adjusted, we turned to the weekend’s most important planning tool: the TV Guide. We planned our viewing schedules with military precision, completely unaware that our favorite show might be preempted by a three-hour broadcast of somebody’s local zoning meeting.
Then there was the telephone.
Our connection to the outside world was attached to the kitchen wall by a twenty-foot coiled cord. Privacy? That was a luxury we simply did not have. If you wanted to make a personal phone call, you had to squeeze yourself into the pantry stretching the cord as far as it would reach.
And if you wanted to put your thoughts on paper, there was the manual typewriter.
You could spend twenty minutes typing the perfect letter, only to make a mistake on the very last word. Then came the decision: correction fluid, razor blade or rip the entire thing out and start over?
Most of us chose door number three.
And then there was the Sears Wish Book.
Oh, what a glorious catalog! My siblings and I would spend hours circling toys we had absolutely no chance of receiving. We dog-eared those pages like we were placing legally binding orders with Santa Claus.
We didn’t get everything we circled. In fact, I’m pretty sure Santa occasionally used our wish lists as a good laugh.
But dreaming was free—and back then, that was enough.
Looking back, we spent a lot more time adjusting antennas, untangling phone cords and fixing typewriter mistakes. Yet somehow, those inconveniences gave life a rhythm.
Maybe that’s what I miss most.
Life was slower. We had fewer choices, fewer conveniences and absolutely no backspace button.
But we had time to dream, laugh and make memories.
And apparently, enough antenna-rotating experience to qualify as today’s human Wi-Fi technician.
Leave a Reply