Life in The Dark Ages: What? No Cable Television?

Things sure were different when I was a kid.  I’ll bet that everyone from 18 to 85 agrees with that statement, although perhaps for different reasons.

During my early childhood, we did not own a home computer, a VCR, or a microwave oven.  In junior high school, I received a strange word processor and video game combo named ADAM.  It was made by SEGA.  All throughout high school, I typed my papers on it.  Instead of having a monitor, it was wired into the back of the 13-inch black and white television set that I had received for my 13th birthday.  I could play Donkey Kong on it when my homework was complete.

We were the first family in our neighborhood to own a videocassette recorder.  It was extrememly heavy, top-loading, and the remote control was connected to the front of the unit with a 15-foot cord.  My mother remembers that blank videotapes cost nearly $50.00 each, but I could swear they were only $17.00.  We both have fuzzy memories.  Either way, we bought them one at a time.  The videotaped movies were not nearly as clear as today’s DVDs, and certainly not as abundant.

I remember renting “Grease,” “Airplane.” and “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother” (which I have been seeking frantically for the last seven years, but cannot locate).  There was no Blockbuster Video.  We rented our movies from Save-Rite.

Our first VCR, as unwieldy and imperfect as it was, seemed almost miraculous since we had no cable television, and we only caught four channels even with the bulky antenna on our house’s roof. 

We did not own a microwave oven until 1987.  When I first saw one at my friend’s house, it took up her entire kitchen counter.  I asked her for a demonstration.  She placed a frozen breaded fish fillet on a hamburger bun and topped it with cheese.  Two minutes later, it was done to varying degrees of perfection.

We did not have push-button phones and touch-tone dialing until I was in high school.  Our rotary dial phone (we had only one) was permanently stuck to the wall.  No cell phones,  no answering machines, no pagers (unless you were a doctor or a drug dealer), no CDs (although we did have vinyl records, cassettes, and 8-track tapes).

I didn’t know anyone with piercings anywhere but their earlobes.  I know there were some people with tongues, eyebrows, or nipples pierced, but they were all in the rock group KISS.

One of the biggest social changes I have noticed in the past two decades is the transition from smoking being allowed everywhere to smoking being banned everywhere.  I can remember people smoking in movie theaters, the mall, doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms, and hospitals (even in the patients’ rooms as long as there were no oxygen tanks present).

When I worked at Valueland Food Warehouse, the store’s managers and employees, except the cashiers, all smoked while they worked.  The customers didn’t seem to mind.  They were smoking, too.

It will be interesting to see what the next two decades hold in store, but I doubt that anything could surprise me anymore.