21st Century Digital Girl

I feel young. I look young. The other day a telemarketer asked if I could put my “mommy” on the line (I gave her a good scare when I told her I was home alone). My cheeks pass the firmness test. And according to the guys doing construction by the Kohl’s I have a “fine piece of ass.”
Sweet.

But I am old. Old. Old. Pass the Metamucil and Raisin Bran OLD. Do you know why? Do you know why Dirt signed my yearbook? Do you know why I wear slacks and a blouse? Because I just told my daughter (and this is verbatim) “ In MY day we couldn’t hear ‘We Are The Dinosaurs’ 4 times in a row. We had to listen to the WHOLE tape. And if we tried to press the rewind button there was a 95% chance you’d over shoot the song you wanted to hear again and end up smack dab in the middle of ‘The Sign.’ ”

When I was growing up my family did not jump at any new fangled inventions. We were sort of a status quo group. Heck, it took us a long time to get cassette tapes instead of records (though I do have some mighty fine memories of dancing around the den to our record player blaring The Monkeys). CDs were something I didn’t dare dabble in until college. Voice mail was for heathens. We didn’t even have an answering machine until the mid 90s.

And forget my grandparents…and great grandparents for that matter. My Safta used flash bulbs for her camera until the day she died…3 years ago. Bread machines were blasphemy to my great grandma. And while my Baubie did get a computer, she just named it Bertha the Bitch and used it to play solitaire and download viruses.

But here at the Mahotma House we try and stay up to date with the coolest of cool inventions. We have fancy digital cameras, DVRs, DVDs, burners, motion sensors and laptops. Ok so we’re kind of geeky, but in that cool look at our fun new toys that will give us massages while down loading our memory into an invisible keyboard sort of way. And the cool new stuff is great. It makes life a little easier. I can burn Laurie Berkner CDs for all the cars, I can record all the episodes of Wonder Pets simply by touching the “season pass” button and I can send my mom video of my daughter singing her Happy Birthday right over my cell phone.

I don’t miss the olden days. I don’t miss VCRs not recording episodes of The Golden Girls because I forgot to turn the power off (seriously-how does that make any sense). I don’t miss not being able to call my husband in the middle of Shaw’s and ask him which flavor of on sale ice cream he is in the mood for (Cheesecake Diva). And I sure as heck don’t miss not being able to show my Queen of Entertainment to the WORLD via her very own youtube channel (you have got to see her play the kazoo).

But of course you don’t know what you are missing if you never had it to begin with. So the Girl Child shall never know what it’s like to miss an episode of her favorite television show. Or to not be able to hear a favorite song on demand. Or not to be able to talk to her Baubie for endless hours thanks to unlimited nights and weekends. She is very lucky. I just want her to appreciate it.

So I guess to her, I AM old. DECADES older than she is. And as any old person it is my job to regale her with stories of my youth. How we were forced to listen to the radio with commercials in the car on the way to school AND back. How we used “film” to take pictures and we wouldn’t even know what the pictures looked like for DAYS after they were taken. How phones used to have cords that got endlessly tangled. And how lucky you young whippersnappers have it and don’t even know it.