Reality Check-Back in the Day....

A funny thing happened over dinner the other night, my daughter Madison said that her friend, M2 (she's a Maddy also) got a stereo for her birthday. "A stereo"? I said. Now there's a word I haven't heard in a long time, stereo! She said yeah, it's cool, it cost $600.00 (not true of course). I said what would she want a stereo for, what with ipods, downloads and portable cd's. I said, what... are you going to pick up a big stereo and take it with you? Why would she want a stereo? My daughter shrugs her shoulders and says I dunno, it's just cool. It's such a different world since when I grew up, which I constantly remind her, my mantra that she is sick of listening to, which begins with the line, back in the day....when there were no computers, blah, blah, blah.

When my daughter brings homework of vocabulary words, all she has to do is click the mouse, go to dictionary.com and type the word. Me, I had good ole Merriam Webster, wet my finger, find the indent listed with the letter, turn to the page and hunt for the word on a page that had thousands of tiny small words, which could have been braille for all I knew. Let's see: progress, progression, progressive. Now when she comes home with some algebra problem, I can always pretend I know it by looking it up on the computer and say, see I told you so!

Now my daughter programs her favorite TV shows when we are gone, her Disney Channel or Nick Jr. Back when, we only had about 7 channels and if we had to go out to dinner or something, too bad, I would miss an episode of Gilligan's Island. Back then it wasn't the episodic shows, it was just Gillian, his same old shenanigans , Ginger trying to seduce the professor, and Skipper trying to get off the island.

We had no DS for portable game playing, it was your plastic battleship or Chinese checkers, try sticking that in your purse! Where would my daughter be without my computer, to which she keeps asking me, when can I get my own computer in my own room and my own TV in my own room? Huh, huh??!! This I counter with, I never had my own TV in my own room, I didn't even have my own room. Never mind that we have 3 TV's, one being a rather large plasma in the living room which she and her friends have taken over, with my husband in the spare room and me in the den. And another thing Missy, you will not be getting your own computer, two computers in this house for 3 people are quite enough. Maybe a laptop when you reach high school, but this I secretly think will come a lot sooner than I plan or would want. My daughter is a wiz at electronics and computers which I don't quite know if that's a good thing. It's just wrong when my daughter can set my ringtones to my favorite song on my cell phone or program the vcr on the TV, when I try and fail.

My daughter is going into middle school which is a big event, leaving her elementary school days behind. Gone are the long list of supplies which at the beginning of every year cost a small fortune. Why do I have supply paper towels, handiwipes, pens, pencils, paper, glue, scissors, candy and everything else not nailed down in a classroom? I remember when all I had to take to school was a binder and a pencil, maybe a pencil box and a stylish lunch box.

Attending my daughter's middle school orientation was like entering a concrete prison. Gone are the open corridors with rows and rows of lockers. Gone are the trees, views of the street and fresh air. Replaced by cement blocked building with only one way in. No adults allowed, drop off your kid at the loading zone and say goodbye. The middle school is like a fortress and I guess in this day and age it needs to be, which is sad. Back in the day, I remember seeing the cars wiz by the school, jumping the chain linked fence of the school for lunch as we sneaked off to the local Tasty Burger.

So when my daughter said that maybe she wanted a stereo at dinner the other night, I thought, is everything old, new again? Nah.....I think not.-Single D