When dinosaurs walked the earth

I went to see a comedian the other night, Louis C.K., and he had a good bit about things that we have today that we didn't have when we were kids. Of course, he added a lot of humor about our complaints about how awful we feel these things are and how we don't even consider the alternative, but lets list a few that he said plus a few of my own. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of things that are common now, that were rare or non-existent when I was little. I will say that my mother and step-father were not early adopters, so most technology that came about had a few years to improve before the Shrum/Miller household even thought about getting it. I'll use the VCR as an example. I was literally the last person I knew to get a VCR, and the only reason we got one was because my parents won one, somehow. If it hadn't been for that, we quite possible could have been the last family in the USA to get a VCR. Here we go:

Cell phones. Not only didn't they have cell phones when I was young, but we didn't even have a cordless phone in our house. I remember having that long, twisted cord that you had to limbo under or high jump over if someone was on the phone, and God forbid, not sitting right next to it.

Caller ID. Never heard of it, you had to answer the phone. On that note,

Answering machine. They may have been around, but we sure as hell didn't have one.

Speaker phone. We had this little brown box that you added to your phone line that made everyone sound like they were in a well. Not the best quality, but hey, we could all speak at the same time so it sounded like our whole family was yelling at grandma from the bottom of a well, probably scaring the hell out of her.

Remote control TV. Didn't have one. Do they even make TVs WITHOUT a remote anymore? Would you ever buy one, even if it was 50% cheaper. (No you can't get a universal remote later, it has no remote capability)

ATM's. How did we survive without these. The banks are open the oh so convenient same hours that you are at work, so you had to take a day off to do your banking back in the day, or stand in line on Saturday morning with everyone else. Now, you probably haven't been inside a bank in a long time, unless you were opening an account or dropping off your bucket of change. (Am I the only one that saves my coins in a container then hauls it in to see how much I have? It's like winning a small lottery, seldom happens, but its a nice surprise when it does.)

Video games. My friend got an Atari 2600 right after they came out and we were amazed at the graphics. Now that stuff looks like what you create when you are trying to learn programming. You get your little stick figure to jump and run in a straight line, you get an A in the class. Now, if your guy can't blink and have sex, you are just fooling yourself, F for you.

Satellite TV. Please, we didn't have cable until people in Siberia had it and they had to drill into the tundra to run it, so satellite wasn't in my family's realm, but it wasn't in anyone elses either. If you were around, I'm sure you remember the "remote control" that was a box with 10 or 12 buttons on it and a dial on one side so you could change the levels and actually have 3 tiers of channels. And just for good measure, you had a really long cord on that thing, just to be sure that if you ran in between the TV and the "remote," you would catch that cord on your foot and rocket the box across the room. Lost a dog or two with that one. Plus, of those three tiers of channels, there were only channels on two tiers and most of the buttons just let you watch static. I spent half my junior high life trying to see a boob on HBO, which we never had. I spent my summers at my dad's in TN, who had HBO, and would stay awake for days at a time trying to catch up on my "porn" when I first went to see him. Now, the same stuff I sleep deprived myself to see on HBO, is prime time material, a bit tame. Once satellite TV came out, you had to have a dish the size of a Volkswagen put in your yard to get it.

Those are the big ones that I came up with over my lunch hour today, I'm sure I'll think of more.