Older Adults Are Revealing The Little Moments That Modern Technology Erased For Younger Generations, And These Never Even Crossed My Mind

“The newer generation will never know the feeling of slamming a phone down when someone annoyed you on a call, then slamming it two or three more times for good measure.”

by  Dannica Ramirez (Thanks to Bob P)

1. “Never knowing who was calling until you picked up the phone. Back in the ’60s and ’70s, there weren’t even answering machines, so if you didn’t pick up, you’d have no idea who called. On the other side of that coin, if you called somebody and they didn’t answer, you’d know it wasn’t because they didn’t want to talk to you, it was because they weren’t available.”

2. “Going to a cellphone-free concert.”

3. “I miss taking most of Sunday to read the paper. I miss doing the big crossword puzzle, having to look up clues in the encyclopedia or dictionary, and reading all the sale inserts. Now I get the paper on an iPad, where there are no puzzles and no Sunday inserts.”

4. “This is a weird one, but I miss being able to hear a song and not know what it is. Any song you want now is a click away, but it used to sometimes take decades to find a track. Better yet, sometimes it took decades to even know where to start looking.”

5. “Analog controls in cars and appliances, which were superior. Touchscreen and digital displays are far less functional than knobs and springs and stuff.”

6. “Phone booths. The feeling of privacy while making a call was unique to the time — being able to step out of the noisy world for a moment and still see it in motion, living and pulsating. The quiet desperation of taking notes on scraps of paper or, worse, on a page of a phone book, then ripping that page out for safekeeping, was so extraordinary. People in a phone booth were still part of the world, but they were seeking to connect to an active site that was far away. Then the call was over, and you moved on with your life.”

7. “I miss the simple, cheap cars that any ham-handed shade-tree mechanic could fix.”

8. “Stereos weighed a lot back in the day, for sure. But they sounded fantastic. People today think earbuds are high-fidelity sound.”

9. “I miss the friendly arguments we used to have about who was the better ballplayer. Nowadays, you can look up statistics immediately, but in the ’70s and ’80s, it was your word against your buddies’ as to who was better.” (Continued)