When I was growing up, I remember my grandparents used to say things such as “in my day we used to walk to school in ten feet of snow” or “in my day we made our own clothes”. I have decided that my catch phrase for any grandchildren that I may have one day is going to be: in my day we used to all have to share one computer.
Recently, I have noticed that modern kids are so obsessed with technology that the simple thought of having to share one little computer with the rest of their household is almost as horrid to them as having to go without food or clean water.
I feel like I am living in an alternate universe sometimes when I see small children demanding instant access to computers all of the time. There are so many homes out there where every kid has his or her own laptop now.
When I was growing up and we were finally fortunate enough to have one computer at home, the screen was black and green and it had a floppy disc drive. Once “advancements” were made, we were lucky enough to be able to see color on the screen. And accessing the web? Forget about it, it was like waiting for paint to dry.
There was one, yes, one computer in the house. Each person had to take a turn. Dial-up was a terrible thing as we all know and sometimes if you were unlucky, by the time you signed on to CompuServe or one of the original versions of AOL, your computer time was up and you had to let someone else in the family use the machine.
So yes, I grew up in a one computer home and I survived. Having only one computer taught me lessons about patience and sharing. If you are reading this and you are older than me maybe you want to yell back at the screen and say “in my day we didn’t even have computers”. But if you are reading this and you are a young person today, know that next time your laptop breaks and your mom or dad won’t take you to get it fixed at that instant, life will go on.
In my day we used to share one computer and I lived to tell about it.