Last week as I half listened to the tedious cricket commentary, I noted that Mark Taylor said he would have to tape an episode of “Alcatraz” because it was on so late at night. I snorted from the kitchen and cried ‘Tape? Tape!’ as I kept stacking the dishwasher. But it brought to mind something that my husband and I quite often reflect on with amusement: it’s our discussion, “how funny will it sound when we explain to our daughter…..”
Now a bit of context: we are Gen Xers in our mid thirties and our daughter is six months old. Let’s imagine the discussions with our daughter in the future, starting with Taylor’s “taping”:
1.When your dad and I were young we ‘taped’ programs on this thing called a video tape. They were big and clunky, and you had them stacked messily under a video player, which was this big box under the tv. Our job as the kid was to painstakingly hand-write the program name on a label on the tape, along with a message intended for the rest of the family – let’s say for instance, ‘21 Jump Street – tape over this and you die!’. And would you believe that when Poppy did regularly tape over shows they were gone FOREVER. You couldn’t even download the program or for that matter, even buy it. It was just gone – forever. Can you fathom that? Nup, it’s unfathomable. What was 21 Jump Street you ask? A programme that had the guy who plays Jack Sparrow in it. You know, from Pirates of the Caribbean 34? Yep, he pretty much looked like he does now – does the man ever age?
2. Yes, I do type quickly on the computer. That’s because in kindy I learnt to touch type on a typewriter. Look it up on Google. It had a ribbon in it, which our little kindy-sized fingers had to keep untangling from the keys. Amazingly, those typing skills have made me a valuable commodity at work. Yes, we did eventually get computers in primary school but we didn’t use them for educational purposes. No, just for playing a game called ‘Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiago?’ for, like, hours on end. And can you believe this? Years later in Year 12 we still hand- wrote all our homework and exams. Hand-wrote!!! And there was NO INTERNET! I know – utterly miserable… You looked things up at the library in a file of cards, and then found the book on the shelf. And then hand copied out the information. Yes, it was time consuming – now that I think about it….