A Pilgrim’s Digression

You know you are getting old when your son starts asking you questions about “when you were a kid” and your answers prompt facial expressions that indicate disbelief.

You know you are getting really old when you start contributing these “when I was a kid” stories without even being asked.  My only consolation is that I have not yet used the expression “Back in my day.”

Brendan is seven, and he is at an age where he is starting to get a grip on the timeline of history, but he isn’t quite there yet.  It’s all still a bit confusing to him, and this confusion prompts some interesting exchanges like this one.

“Dad, was Benjamin Franklin alive when you were a kid?”

“Oh no, ” I tell him.

“So you didn’t have electricity when you were a kid?”

“Oh, we had electricity,” I say, “But Benjamin Franklin was born almost exactly 300 years ago.”

“Did Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln know each other?”

“No, no, they are from two different centuries,” I answer.

“So did you ever see Abraham Lincoln on TV?”

At this point, what can I do?  I try to change the subject.

“No, but let me tell you a story.  When I was your age…”

What I often don’t realize before beginning these trips down memory lane is that sometimes it can be hard to put into words what I am really trying to say.  How do I explain to a kid what television was like before cable, when we got one fuzzy channel on our black and white TV–and the clarity of that channel was totally dependent on how the antenna was positioned (”What’s an antenna, Dad?”).  If someone walked across the room too heavily, the picture would go out.

How do I explain the early eighties equivalent of the iPod, the portable tape player/recorder?  This was before even the Walkman.  At night when I was supposed to be sleeping, I would lie in bed with my tape player and an earphone (yes, that’s right, earphone; there was only one!) listening to Bon Jovi cassettes, or sometimes mix tapes I made myself by trying to record songs from the radio.

I was kind of an obsessive about capturing a song from radio without the lead-in by an announcer.  I remember many frustrating afternoons sitting by my parents’ AM/FM tape deck waiting for a song to come on that I wanted to record, then either hitting the play and record buttons too late, or too soon.

Back to the earphone story, though.  Back then, I think we just called it an earphone, but today it more properly resembels the earbud.  It was a rather bulbous, hard plastic earbud that you had to plug into one of your ears.  It didn’t fit properly, since I was a kid, and after a short time my ear would feel like someone had punched me in the side of the head.  There were stereo headphones back then, but if I recall they were expensive until the Walkman made them more accessible.  Me, I just had the cheapo white earphone.

Back in my day, every once in awhile the tape player would eat your tape.  Why, you might lose ten or twenty songs you spent a whole weekend collecting off the radio!  Just think of that, son, the next time you download some new songs for your iPod.

Back in my day, we only had 13 channels, even with cable.  And the only reality show we watched was when we had happened to walk in on mom and dad in the bedroom.  And you think “Celebrity Rehab” is scary?

Why, back in my day, McDonalds served chinese food, and we ate it and we liked it.  Chicken McNuggets…bah!  I ate my first chicken McNugget with a chopstick and Sweet and Sour sauce.  So don’t give me any of this McRib crap.

And you know what?  Back in my day, the pizza wasn’t delivered to your door.  We had to go pick it up.  Then Domino’s came along and made us all lazy.  Domino’s had that Noid mascot, too, so don’t talk to me about annoying TV commercials.  I know all about them!

Back in my day, we had to get our porn from our father’s dresser drawer, just like he did when he was a kid.  You kids today don’t know how easy you have it.

Back in my day, our video games gave us blisters on our thumbs, yessir they did.   I once had a blister that lasted a week, but did I let that stop me from playing Pac-Man?  Hell no.  I learned to move the joystick with my left hand, until my right hand healed.

Those were tough times…back in my day.