By the grace of God, our local librarian chooses to show old-school film strips during Saturday Story Time, and I'm not talking about the "Your Body is Changing" one. I told Jill that when Dad and I were kids, we watched movies from a projector at school. Amazing! And it was only on a RARE occasion that we got to watch TV, like when a space shuttle was taking off. Shocking!
Other things we've had the privilege of describing with no tactile visual aides:
- Record players. Jill: "You played a round piece of plastic on it and music came out? Well, do you have one that I can see?" Somewhere, there's a stack of 45s containing Madonna, Duran Duran, Jefferson Starship and Howard Jones singles.
- VCRs. "Why is this Snow White movie so big?" I can distinctly remember when the first of my friend's families got a VCR. Intrigue! Living rooms packed with 13 year-old kids to watch The Sound of Music. You had to rent the tapes from the furniture store where you bought the VCR. Hilarious...now our DVD come in the mail!
- Having to actually watch commercials on live TV...we've had a DVR since shortly before she was born; frankly a godsend for families with young children. We routinely hear, "Can you skip 'it'," in reference to commercials. I feel like sitting her down and telling her that commercials are what keep a roof over her head; alas, too nebulous for a 4 year old. Related to this, pre-VCR, the neighborhood kids and I would record The Dukes of Hazzard and Knight Rider on a shoe box tape recorder, then relive the excitement, commercials and all, in Johnson's upstairs. Good times.
- I wonder what the heck she's going to do with all of her free time once research-paper season rolls around? No more lugging around a stack of 3x5" cards and sifting through the Readers' Guide to find some odd article in Mother Jones. Just log on to the Information Super Highway! She'll have so much information, there will be no need to use flowery language, triple spacing or extra wide margins to stretch the report to the requisite 10 pages.
- I'm not even going to start on microwaves.
- This does not include the toy category, but to her, markers and crayons have always been washable. I tried to explain a real Slinky to her after she got a tiny plastic knock-off at the dentist's office. It doesn't take batteries, but it can "walk down stairs alone or in pairs"? Right on...then it gets tangled up and ruined.
