You've Come a Long Way, Baby

So I turn 30 on Sunday. I'd by lying if I said it wasn't a tad depressing. When you're in school until 27, you sort of feel like you've wasted half your life. Walking away with four degrees including a doctorate is swell and all, but the debt it produces makes you wonder if it's all worth it. And to date I've been unsuccessful in getting people to call attorneys "Dr. ____," though I really think they ought.

Anyway, such a big milestone got me thinking about how things have changed in 30 years--usually to reflect the Information Age's now now now mentality. And it made me appreciate when life was a little slower, a little simplier. And it made me feel a little bad for my younger friends who scarcely remember a time before 24-hour news and instantly downloadable music.

So here, in no particular order, is a little list of things that I remember about the good ole' days. (God, I feel old saying that.)

1. I remember when there was no such thing as "body wash." People used soap. And soap worked just fine. And, ya know what, it still works just fine and is cheaper than silly body wash. Oh, and you can take it on a plane.

2. I remember before the miraculous Internet. And while it's obviously the coolest thing since the invention of the telephone, there was a certain mystery to life in the days when you had to ask another person a question or go to the library to look something up. Well, and it was nice to know that you didn't have to log into Facebook at least a few times a day so you wouldn't get withdrawal symptoms.

3. I remember those glorious days before cell phones. Back in high school I had one friend who had a cell phone. One. When we wanted to meet up at the football game on Friday night, we set a time to meet at the flagpole, and we showed up. There was no being late. There was, after all, no way to get in touch with someone if you were late. People didn't say, "Oh, I'll just call you when I get there." I truly think this is one reason kids today have no sense of time management. When you can always be contacted, plans can always be altered. I'd like to see all cell phone companies shut down for a week and watch the world melt... and children adapt.

4. I remember jogging with my bright yellow Sony Walkman. And it sounded like crap. And then my Discman. And then my Discman with 10-second skip protection, which never really worked. Kids with iPods today have no idea how lucky they are. Especially in the days before burnable CDs, I had to pick one disc and listen to that my entire six mile run! The horror!

5. I remember when TV went off the air. Oh, the glorious days of turning on the tube at 2 am and seeing snow. And then sometime--around 5:00 or 6:00 am--the network came back on the air, with a visual of an American flag and a band playing The Star Spangled Banner. It was a neat way to start the day.

6. I remember when you had to develop film. There was no way to check a photo to see if it sucked after you took it. I remember gleefully picking up the photos at the grocery store and standing in the parking lot laughing at the bad ones. Sometimes you threw them away; sometimes you kept them. But at least you didn't delete them instantly from your digital camera--funny memories forever banished moments after becoming pixels just because John had his eyes closed.

7. I remember the days before Caller ID. Someone called, you picked up. If it was Aunt Middy, you slouched in your chair, 'cause you know you'd be listening for a while. Yes, annoying callers sucked, but a ringing phone was always a crapshoot--a fun little mystery. Maybe it was Ed McMahon calling about that one-million dollar prize!!! But... usually it was just Aunt Middy.

8. I remember the days before DVR or even VCR+. The days when you had to be home or had to laboriously program your VCR to record a show if you weren't going to be home. (And had to guesstimate if you had enough room on the tape to hold your show.)

9. I remember ATARI, which in some ways will forever be cooler than Nintendo, Sega, Wii or any of that other crap. ATARI was simple... and it was awesome. I was sitting on the El a few days ago and saw a little girl playing a modern-day version of Pong on her dad's Blackberry. And I smiled. I'm sure if we could have played Pong on a mobile device in the 80s, we would have gone apeshit. But it's adorable to think that that little girl is playing the same game her dad did in 1985.

10. I remember when you had to look up books in a card catalog. Subject. Author. Title. And it worked just fine.

11. I remember with a certain amount of fondness the nuclear drills we used to do in grade school. Get down under your desks and cover your heads! The Russians are coming! Because, you know, when the Russians attack us with a nuclear bomb, our crappy little desks will surely protect us from the giant fireball that will rip through the school.

12. And I remember a time before 24-hour cable news. On the East Coast, the news was at 6:00 pm. It lasted an hour. If it was important, you heard about it in that hour. I'm ashamed to mention how many times I've been watching CNN and suddenly realized, "I've just watched this f*cking story three times!" When you're limited to an hour, you stick to the important stuff; when you have all day, you just repeat shit. One day I'd love to own a news channel, and on slow days if there wasn't anything particularly newsworthy going on, I'd show cartoons instead. Don't you think viewers would appreciate that?

Those older than I, of course, have slightly different memories. I, for example, have always known ATMs. I'm told there was a time before the 80s that if you didn't have cash by the time banks closed on Fridays, you didn't go to the bars that weekend. There simply was no other alternative.

While the availability of everything in 2009 and the instant gratification we get with quick downloads, 24-hour news, credit accepted even at fast food restaurants, etc., is wonderful, I do occasionally long for the days when things could wait. When people had to plan to meet at the flagpole. When there was some mystery behind a ringing telephone. When our worst enemy was a country with definitive borders instead of a radical religious sect with no boundaries.

Finally, I remember the first time I discovered what I would consider "club music." I was 11-ish. And sometimes at night, we could faintly receive radio stations from Cleveland. Some Cleveland station was playing this sweet ass remix of Janet Jackson's State of the World. I recorded it... on a cassette of course. There was something both frustrating and amazing about the fact that I didn't know who remixed it. I didn't know where on earth I could buy it (and probably couldn't buy it anywhere in rural PA anyway). It was just... there. For a few minutes it was on the airwaves, and then it was gone. Today, I'd Shazam the unknown song with my iPhone; Shazam would immediately tell me the artist, song title, and remixer; and then I'd find the song online with relatively no effort. No more mystery. Everything is here. Everything is now.

On a whim, I just YouTubed "Janet Jackson State of the World." The very first hit was this. It took 19 years, but I now know the answer. It's the United Nations mix. And, yes, it's still a sweet ass remix.