Category Archives: Digital dinosaur

Confessions of a Memory Hoarder

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Along with routinely sharing a great deal of storytelling throughout my youth, my parents left me with many family photo albums and boxes of both our family and distant family memories (including letters, scrapbooks, military artifacts, and more). My mom even wrote a short autobiography in her later years, which is packed with her lifelong stories, and is such a treasure for me.

Throughout my life I have always been one to collect and preserve memories. Some people might even say I’m a “memory hoarder” and they would probably be right.

Ah, memories, and the stories behind them. They were important to my mom and they are important to me.

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Do Dinosaurs Use Address Books? Or Are They Both Obsolete?

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My “kids” often say I’m a technology dinosaur. But I’m a dinosaur in so many other ways as well.

Recently, when I reached for my spiral-bound, paper-based address book, I caught myself reflecting on the many cross-outs throughout the book—as well as the many entries needing to be crossed out!

spiral-bound address book showing many entries crossed out

Now keep in mind, my address book is at least 31 years old. How do I know that? Well, it contains my 31-year-old son’s original pediatrician’s phone number (the one who actually came and examined him at the hospital when he was born). A month later we ended up with a different pediatrician, so the original doctor’s name and info was soon crossed out. There’s still an arrow from that cross-out to the replacement pediatrician’s name and number. Of course, that doctor’s contact information, too, was crossed out long ago.

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Text-pectations

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Ever wonder about how our communications have changed since “back in the day?”

As a young boomer, I have already seen tremendous change in how people communicate. When I went to college, there was no such thing as a personal computer, the internet or cell phones! Imagine…no cell phones and no texting.

My college age sons still can’t really get their heads around that one…no texting.

How did we Neanderthals communicate back then? Continue reading →

When the World Was Only as Large as My Golden Book Set

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Remember When We Didn’t Have The World at our Finger Tips?

As I often do these days, I catch myself reflecting on “life when I was young” compared to that of my sons and young relatives. And as we sat at dinner one night, with my niece and nephew busily on their iPhones…researching basically any and every topic that was brought up during dinner (“Who was that British guy in that spy movie?”…”What was the name of that song in that commercial…?”), I couldn’t help think of my family’s prized Golden Book Encyclopedia set. Remember those?

Imagine, everything from A to B in a single encyclopedia.

Was the world that simple then? Or were we?

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Have Christmas Cards Become Obsoleted (Too)?

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This year, I once again spent a good deal of time writing a special verse for my family’s annual Christmas card. I also selected a number of recent photos of my college-age kids to share as part of the card. Sending Christmas cards is a tradition that my mom first exposed me to when I was very young; I routinely sent relatives a hand-written card…not expecting anything in return, just to connect with them and wish them well. My mom had thought it was particularly important as most of my relatives lived on the other side of the US from our family. I fear this tradition is coming to an end, however. As with many things in my life, I feel like I am plodding along in a dinosaur fashion by actually sending out physical cards. Have Christmas cards now become obsoleted, too? 

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