it's official...

I am officially on my way to getting old.. I've hit 30... it's all "approaching old' now until I determine I'm old enough and my age just going backwards.In my lifetime so far I have seen the rise of great things, such as cable & satellite television, video games, computers and the internet. I have gone from never in constant contact with others to not being able to be away from my phone thanks to the progression of cellular services- gone are the days of "pagers", and I bet if you mention that to a teen today they won't know what I'm talking about..."you know when I was a kid we didn't have cell phones like you guys do now. We had pagers where someone would dial the number and you would beep and be expected to use a land line to call them back." *gasp* shock and fear on the faces of those hearing the old fogey story, "and before that our parents would just shout out the door and the rule was stay within shouting radius." gone are those days for sure! I've seen the change over of Cassettes to mp3's with stages of CDs and illegal mp3's between. Even now, I cringe at the idea of having to pay for an mp3 as when I was in college, we would rip and share our music collections on the network and no one seems to care.. it was about volume and how many new songs you could acquire in a short amount of time. it was great. My video gaming experiences began when my cousins gave us their Atari when Nintendo came into the scene- alway sa step behind everyone else, but i didn't care- In my house now I currently have a working SNES & N64. and a Wii too. Never did have a game cube, or own another system since that Atari.

I rememeber being jealous of my friends as a kid because they had pay channels like Nickelodeon & Disney where we would go over and watch all the Double Dare and You Can't do that on Television we could... then they would have free Nick & Disney week where even the poor like us with basic cable could experience the awesomeness of programming for kids at our very own home. if i didn't have channels like Noggin and Nicktoons now with my own kids.. I think I might have had a stoke by now. How did our parents cope?
OH! they would make us play outside.... that's right.... and boy did we run amok all over Onset, right ladies?? Gosh. the places I went to on my own and the only rule was "be back before dark" and there were no cell phones.. how many of us who are parents now would let your 8 year old walk to the cash market about 1/4-1/2 mile away to get milk or whatever and not worry about all the whack jobs that you think are going to get your kid?? yeah didn't think so. And oddly enough it was the norm. Onset was out of the sketchy phase (sorta) and we got to reap the benefits of it.

I am of the generation where our whole life has involved some sort of electronic technology that has evolved into necessary items in our workaholic-multitasking lifestyles we now deal with. Imagine if there were no computers. Really. I can't do it. I would go crazy if they didn't exist to occupy my little brain in one form or another.... that's for sure.. as if I weren't crazy enough as it is. HA!

Anybody else having "old moments"? they crack me up and make me a little sad at the same time every time they happen. Last night we went out for dinner, and it donned on me I couldn't remember the last time I got carded. Shit.. when was it?! As much as young people loathe getting carded it makes us old fogey's feel young for a few minutes, "I look under 27?! Thanks-here you go!!" My most recent old moment occured while I was at a walk for Meals on Wheels. Shut it up. I'm not old enough for that service (yet). We were walking and there was a group of teenagers dressed up as characters from Green Eggs and Ham. One chick had shoes like these:

I was all like "What?!", and said to her, " Those are awesome Punky Brewster shoes." She looked at me like I had 3 heads, shook her head and said, " I don't know what you're talking about" WHAT?! geez kids today, man... don't know what they're missing. So I went on and told her about the show, and she said to her friends something along the lines of, "great now I'm wearing shoes from the 70's" OUCH! I mumbled back a reply of "the 80's.. it was during the 80's"... *sigh*

next weekend is the birthday bash. BBQ & teriyaki steak.. Key things for me. When I think about celebrating my birthday those come to mind. Things I will be missing this year: my family (husband & kids excluded)- I live several hours from all of my family (mom, sister, cousins, etc) My grandparents are gone and I miss them all the time. Also missing this year a massive parade and receipt of a bathing suit (i assume no one has purchased me a bathing suit).. Also things which I associate to celebrating my birthday-- as We often went to my Grandparents on Memorial Day weekend in Newtonville and had all of these things!