I was thinking today how different the world is now, for my son, than it was in 1980 when I finished high school. I saw a meme not long ago with a smart phone and beside it was a pile of all the things it replaced – the camera, calculator, video camera, phone book, computer, flashlight, radio, etc.
If you took my brilliant son and sent him back in time to 1980 he would be pretty helpless. I would be fine, but I would be doing a lot of heavy sighing at having to go back and do so many things manually that we take for granted now.
people still took black and white photos! above, me in high school, newspaper staff
In 1980 I was thrilled that my parents bought me an electric typewriter to take to college. It was heavy and bulky, and paper was expensive and had to be bought at specialty stores. I wrote out all my school papers by hand before typing them up. If I made a mistake I had to use liquid paper to fix it, and it never looked nice.
My parents bought their first microwave oven in 1980. I remember going home from school one weekend and seeing the enormous 500 lb. microwave oven and being warned not to touch it until Mother had read the 100 page book detailing how to use it. It scared me.
(I will admit, I was secretly tempted to put some tinfoil in there for 2 minutes and see what happened…)
In 1980 I had only seen a few computers, and I’d never touched one. There were Wang computers at my school but only a few kids were allowed to take computer classes and the room where the computers were kept was off-limits to math morons like myself. I had never heard the term “personal computer.”
The first time I had my own computer at work was in 1993. I was 30 years old.
I didn’t have a camera in 1980. I desperately wanted one. My father had a camera but he had paid good money for it and I wasn’t allowed to touch it. That’s why we only have a few photos from my childhood and they were mostly made at birthdays, Christmas, and Easter.
My mother liked to take photos and Dad got her a Polaroid camera somewhere around 1980 or 1981 and when the picture was made it shot out of the camera and you could then watch it develop right before your eyes. That seemed miraculous. In the olden days, you had to take the camera, rewind the film, and take it to a shop where the photos could be developed, which usually took a few days.
When 1 Hour photo shops became common in the 1980’s we thought that was incredibly fast.
me and Dad, me wearing my costume from Hello Dolly!, spring 1980
Phones were available only from Southern Bell, and they were expensive. You had to physically go down to the Southern Bell office and buy the phones, or the technician brought them to your house and charged you to install them. Long distance calls were expensive, and so if someone was in another city or state and you lived in my house… you had to deal with Dad standing there glaring at you and pointing at his watch every time you made a long distance call.
The phone companies were a monopoly. Michael said to me the other day he had learned in school about monopolies because the teacher had told the kids about the phone company situation years ago. “You only had ONE phone company?!” he said incredulously, shaking his head in horrified bewilderment.
College classes requiring research papers were the bane of my existence. When I had to do research for a school paper, I had to take paper, pencils, and 3x5 notecards, and physically go to the library – a place where you had to be VERY quiet and you couldn’t eat or drink. I remember trying to use the library computer at UGA and becoming so frustrated I went straight back to the card catalog. Heavy books had to be hunted down, one by one, and sometimes they were on different floors. Notes were made, citations were written hastily, and then I had to stop and rest. Later, back in my dorm room, I had to assemble all the bits of information into a coherent paper. I usually changed my topic 3-5 times to fit what research materials I could find. It took HOURS. It gave me a headache. I hated writing research papers.
[The last time Michael had to research a paper I helped him do it on the computer and it took ONE HOUR. He showed me a website that does your citations for you. He has NO IDEA how lucky he is!]
I didn’t know it until a few years later when I was working as a paralegal, but if I wanted to know where someone lived in 1980 the best source was the City Directory. The first law firm where I worked had city directories – huge, heavy books – going back decades. Unlike phone books, they had complete addresses, and you could see names and addresses of neighbors, and how long someone had lived at that address. They were very helpful for collections cases.
My mother still keeps 3x5 cards in a small plastic box, alphabetized, showing the addresses and phone numbers of all our friends and relatives. She gets out the box when she writes Christmas cards. I still have address books in a drawer, and somewhere around here there is a stack of rolodex cards with work colleague names, phone numbers, etc. I used that rolodex for years, taking my personal cards from job to job.
Michael works delivering food, and he uses the GPS on his phone to find folks’ houses. I showed him a map not long ago and he just shook his head and backed away from it like it would bite him. “You NEED to know how to read a map, Sweetie –“ I began, but he wasn’t having it.
No long car trip was complete when I was a kid without my parents having at least one fight involving a map. I remember pulling over on the side of the road so Daddy could spread out the map on the trunk and stand there staring at it and muttering to himself.
When I was a kid there were no welcome stations every 50 miles or McDonald’s at every exit. When you had to go to the bathroom really bad, you might have to just pull over and run for the trees. Sometimes Dad would open both side doors and one would squat and pee right there on the side of the road, sheltered from view as much as possible. I remember a little plastic potty being put in the back of the station wagon for emergencies…
me and my Hasty cousins, about 1972 - note Linda and I were barefoot...
Car trips were entirely different when I was a kid. We had a station wagon until I was about 8, and Bruce and I usually rode back there with pillows, toys, books, and snacks, and our mandate was to play nicely and not bother Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad sat up front and smoked and talked.
If Bruce and I were fighting and didn’t stop when warned, Dad was apt to pull the car over and jump out of the car, pulling off his belt as he strode angrily back to the back. We didn’t get whipped a lot, but sometimes…
Dad at our lake cabin, early 1970's
We didn’t get to watch movies on trips. We were told to pack a bag with books and toys and things we could entertain ourselves with on the trip. My parents never felt they had to entertain us.
I could go on a lovely vacation now if I had $1 for every time I heard my father say “Children are to be SEEN and NOT HEARD.”
I digressed.
Michael loves to play videogames. When I was a kid, we played board games. I was great at Chinese Checkers, although my grandmother always beat me. We also played games outside – hide and go seek, kickball, kick the can, school, red rover, red light green light, dodgeball, etc.
When I graduated from high school I still liked to play all those games but I never would’ve admitted it.
Only rich kids had pingpong tables or trampolines. Nobody I knew had a swimming pool in their backyard.
In 1980, watching a movie was a special event. I remember dressing up to go to the movie theater. Movies shown on TV were edited and there were a million commercials.
In 1980 my mother was considered kind of a health nut because she insisted that there was a vegetable at every dinner, and she still wanted me and my brother to drink a big glass of milk every night, as we had throughout our childhoods.
One thing we still adhere to is that phones are ignored during dinner. If the phone rings while we’re eating, it will almost always be ignored.
Michael would be startled to know that in 1980, when the phone rang, we had NO IDEA who was calling or where they were located. There were no answering machines. When the phone rang, you picked it up – out of curiosity if for no other reason.
In 1980, boys and girls wore pants at their waistlines.
Nobody but sailors had tattoos in 1980.
Many folks still didn’t have cable television and 3 channels were considered plenty.
If you wanted music you bought vinyl records or cassette tapes and they wore out, after repeated playings.
There were no debit cards. You paid by cash, check, or credit card.
People dressed up to go to church.
We bought tennis shoes at K-Mart and they were Keds and cost $3 a pair.
Nobody drank bottled water. You bought sodas or juice, or carried a thermos.
Boys didn’t wear jewelry – except a wedding ring or school ring -- and certainly didn’t have pierced ears. Only females got anything pierced, and then it was only one hole per earlobe. [That may not have been true everywhere but it was true here in the South.]
me in 1980, age 18, a college freshman
I could write more, but I won’t. I think I’ve hit the high spots. The world of 1980 was a much different world than today, and I have no desire to travel back in time.
I love my smartphone and my computer. I love all the conveniences of today.
It’s ironic, though, that my idea of a great vacation is just sitting on the beach with a book, or walking down the beach – away from cell phones and computers and televisions…
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