"Hey Dad, what did you do when you were a kid? You didn't have the Internet." - Brandon (age 11)
I love my kids.
They make me laugh.
Much like their father, they are all very inquisitive.
I couldn't help but chuckle when he asked me this question. I chuckled because all that he knows is the internet. He won't ever live in a world without the "information highway." I did. And it was fun. I immediately thought of the stories that he will tell his kids about their grandfather many years from now.
After I stopped laughing, I told him that we managed to have a bunch of fun without the internet or computers. I told him that I spent a lot of time outside. His eyes lit up! Much like me, he likes being outside. Back then...EVERYTHING happened outside. You were considered lame if you stayed in the house in the 80s. LOL
I also told him that because we were no cellphones for us to be glued to...we actually had to talk to the people who were in the room with us. There were no handheld electronics to occupy our time on the 10 hour drive from South Carolina to New Jersey every summer. But we spent our time learning about the cities on I-95. Since there was no GPS, I learned how to read a map. That was fun.
Things were simple then. For example, I loved talking on the phone. If my mom told me that I couldn't talk on the phone for a week, I'd be devastated. I spent hours talking on the phone to my homboys and my girlfriends. It didn't matter. It could be a conversation until 4am or falling asleep on the phone...only to be awakened by my mom yelling at me to get off the phone.
While it may be hard for them to fathom, I actually enjoyed life without the internet. While I enjoy the technology, I'll be the first to admit that it's changed the game. It's made us less humanistic and more robotic
And in many ways...less fun.
