Saturday, August 30, 2014

Oh to have the days of old...

In my day, things were much simpler. Our music was played on a turntable or an 8 track tape or a cassette tape or, at our house, on a reel to reel player:



When we went on car trips, there were no ipods or MP3 players. We plugged our tape player into the cigarette lighter in the car and played our favorite tape:



Our teenage years blossomed with the freedom of taking your music with you...powered by the force of 4-6 AA batteries and a whole lot of awesome:



I looked like a boss mowing the lawn whilst jamming to the sweet sounds of the Talking Heads. Probably why I have hearing loss in my left ear now, but it was great then. Don't even get me started about the Discman. Off the charts in terms of excitement.

Yes, my brother got in trouble when my mom found his Led Zeppelin album collection and yes, my father made me read the lyrics to Men At Work songs at the dinner table just to hear my 14 year old self try to explain why they spoke to me. But never did any of us imagine that we would be having a discussion about YouTube videos and how, yes taste test videos are funny, but when someone uses profanity to express their dislike of the food...that is not okay. And yes, lots of the current music has a great beat and a catchy tune, but the lyrics would make Quentin Tarrantino blush...maybe. I am a proud parent and trust my children, but I was also a kid once and I know that curiosity is much easier satisfy in this day and age. We checked one child's ipad tonight and caused a great stir of worry. "If you haven't looked at anything inappropriate, you don't have anything to worry about." That was good enough for them. It is a hard thing to tell a child that there could be a horrible and disturbing link hidden in that funny puppy video, but they need to know. The hub is an IT wizard, so they'll be locked down until they leave for college, but he has no jurisdiction at school or in the public library. We just have to arm them with the right information.

Technology is amazing, but I will always pine for a simpler day, when I grooved to these dulcet tunes:



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