Whippersnappers... I still don't have a cell, flip or otherwise. A lot of folks are mad with me about it but I appreciate not always being expected to converse when anybody and everybody wants to bother me.
LOL...I feel ya on that one, especially since I can still remember the days of rotary phones and party lines.
Years ago I was forced to get a cell because of my job at the time. Company paid the bill so what the heck. I've had one ever since but even back then I would piss my boss off cause I usually had it turned off.....same applies now.....without the boss
I still have a flip phone, my first cell phone, which I only got less than 2 years ago, because a few of my clients and ALL my work partners demanded that I be reachable at crunch time. I hate using it. It has so many touch-activated functions that are set off just by my slightest body movement. I hate that. That's 10 times worse with smartphones, which is why I'll never get one. Same for pad-style computers. I'll carry around a MacBook, rather than get an I-pad. If I sneezed I set of 347 desktop functions or programmes, many of which I'll NEVER be able to close!
I'm dependent upon computers for my work, but often, I wish computers were never invented. Same for mobile phones, and passwords [[I have over 100 user names and passwords, most of which I can NEVER remember, as most of them have different rules about which keyboard characters must and can be used in user names and passwords. For most of my government, bank, commercial, and communication website account memberships, I must click on "forgot user name AND password" button, and receive them one-by-one, eventually, as I even forget my first, car, best friend's name, or mother's maiden name, or that I ever had a first car, first pet, or mother, or favourite colour. It's tough being old!
I hope "the next life" is less complicated!
Simple: don't let the phone control you. You control the phone! Having a smartphone is great! I can text instead of talk, I can check the internet for the nearest restaurant, use it as a GPS, take pictures if I need, identify songs I want to know the name of, use it as a music player, watch videos and movies, post on Twitter, check the news, compare prices when shopping, use it as an internet hub for my tablet or laptop, check my database when shopping for music so I don't buy doubles, check the SPL of a place if I think it's too loud, and lots of other things.
Yes, Smartphones can do a LOT more than flipphones, but let's not make flipphones seem totally worthless. Mine can text, and access The Internet, and has a camera. But, of course, it's screen is way too small to really see things well on The Internet. I wouldn't want to watch a film or sports event on such a small screen. But even a smartphone's bigger screen is WAY TOO SMALL, for viewing entertainment. But, then, so are pad/computers and even laptops. I have roughly a 30 inch screen on my desktop, so I can watch films and sports events on a decent size screen.
Even at an old age, you can avoid aches and pains all the time, if you work out every day, get enough sleep and eat only healthy foods. I even had a lot of hockey injuries over my 20 years of organised play, and they only bother me if I run a reasonably long distance on a hard surface, walk or run into something hard when looking the other way, or get into a fight . I'm over 70 and don't ever have regular aches and pains. But, I lift weights and use a step machine or ride a bicycle a decent distance every day, or, at least, do a lot of fast walking or some swimming.
I enjoy my life more now than I did when I was in my late teens and 20s.
I have a new pal,his name is arthur i. Tis,he started hangin around the time i turned fifty and he won't leave no matter how many time i try to get rid of him...this guys a real pain.
HEY ROBB,I DO WORK OUT...ONE SIP FIRST THING IN THE MORNING,TWO SIPS BEFORE BREAKFAST[sometimes two sips IS breakfast]...A SWIG AT TEN O'CLOCK AND THREE MORE AT NOON,I STOP COUNTING AFTER THAT...AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
I'm flipping out over here.
I have to say, I love my iPhone - actually I'm not sure I could live without it, LOL! It's like a personal mini computer that can do everything!! They can be annoying though and old phones work just as well as phones.
Remember making a long distance call from the phone booth and hoping you had enough change?
Remember when you paid in cash and the cashier didn't seem confused? They barely touch money any more and some have a little grin when counting cash. It's like they're thinking "well, that's different!"
I remember placing 3rd party billing calls on the phone in my dorm room to girls I knew across the country and having the charges billed to my parents phone in another State. When my father found out, he called all of them and told them to no longer accept calls from me! LOL! How embarrassing!
Remember finding a nickel on the ground as a kid and you ran to the corner store to spend it[hehe]? And if you found a quarter you were in heaven.
"I enjoy my life more now than I did when I was in my late teens and 20s. "
cause you ain't broke no mo.... Robb.
Remember when teachers just taught and didn't get political except when teaching students about politics?
Our teachers taught us well. We had very serious campaigns for Jr. High President and Vice President. We went through the whole process for weeks and when the election happened it got emotional for some of the kids. I had an Art teacher in High School who taught us a lot about African History and culture. He did it because there were no other classes devoted to it. I appreciated all of them very much now.
My cousin and I found a Canadian $10 bill in an alley in 1953, when we were 7 and 8 years old. That was back when The Canadian Dollar was $1.08 US. That was a LOT of money back in those days. That could have bought 101 comic books. We went and got change and split it [[$5 each). That was a big day back then, That was more than half the money for a BB gun.
Not really. I was working lots of hours as a late teenager, and had enough money. In my 20s, I was an environmental and economics consultant for The United Nations on development projects in The 3rd World. I made a LOT more money then than I do now, as a comic book artist/writer, children's book writer and sometimes animator. I have living costs in 4 countries to pay, even when I'm not there, so I have to be more careful with my money now than when I was in my teens and twenties. But, nevertheless, I enjoy my life a lot more now, because I like my work, and so, am enjoying myself in most waking hours. Money only matters when I don't have enough for the basics [[roof over head, enough food, travel money).Extra money for luxuries is nothing I need. At my age, just being able to spend time with my brother and sisters, and ladyfriend, and my best friends is all I really care about.
Cause you ain't broke.At my age, just being able to spend time with my brother and sisters, and ladyfriend, and my best friends is all I really care about.
There you go Des, I fixed it for ya.
Robbk, I'm just Joshing you man.
i too had a teacher in high school who taught us about black history,which up til then we have very very little of,here's an example-i went to jr.high school at[get this]benjamin banneker jr.high]anyone from d.c. Knows this school,well not only did we not know who banneker was there was no pictures of him anywhere in the school..99% black students-sad!!
My mom bought us the African-American History Mystery Game when I was in the fifth grade. I learned about Benjamin Banneker, Crispus Attucks, and a bunch of Black history names and dates that I still remember until this day. I got a greater sense of self worth from learning that we were more than just background characters before the Civil War. Y'all reminded me of that. I'm going to call Mom tomorrow and thank her for that.
People suggest that Black History Month is past its relevance but if it is, it's only because parents and teachers are letting it be.
There's nobody like mom-bless em all!!
Remember when the basement was just a room with a tv,maybe a record player[for those good ol parties]and a cold floor?
I remember our basement before people had TVs in their houses. We had a top-loader, circle-spinning clothes washing machine, a large meat freezer and a coal furnace and large coal bin. I spent a lot of time down there during winter, shoveling coal into the furnace. We had a coal chute on the wall, where the coal truck would send coal down.
No families had clothes dryers in those days. In Spring and Summer, and early fall, we'd hang our clothes on our clotheslines in our side yard. They ran on wire lines suspended between two poles. The backyards of our house and our neighbours' [[my uncle's and aunts') formed a large hockey rink, so those permanent iron, cement-anchored poles couldn't sit in the back. In Winter, we had to dry our clothes on portable wood-framed clothes drying lattices, sitting in our attic. The forced heat from the furnace would rise that far, and be warmer up there than down lower, in the house. We usually kept our house at about 55 degrees Fahrenheit [[we didn't use Celsius back then, in Canada), because it was too much of a change to come inside from 50 below zero to 70 degrees above. That's 120 degrees difference. When we moved to Chicago and saw that people kept their houses at 75 and even up to 80 and 85 degrees in Winter, I was sent into shock from surprise, and knocked unconscious from heat prostration. I couldn't spend more than about 5 minutes at a time inside my Black friends homes in Winter, without almost passing out. I'd get soaked in sweat, and then go outside and almost freeze to death. I wasn't surprised to see so many people in Chicago sick in Winter from having their bodies constantly needing to adjust to 75-90 degree temperature changes. It just wasn't like that in Canada back in the day.
The heat in Summer was much worse and much more humid in Chicago than in Winnipeg [[although Winnipeg's mosquitoes were much worse). Back in the '50s and '60s, no one had air conditioning in their homes. Even most stores didn't have it. The only place to escape the stifling heat was movie houses. At night, I'd lie in a pool of sweat, and have a hard time sleeping. So, I would stick my pillow in the big freezer, and it would be cool for me for a few minutes.
Later, like many people, we put in a tile floor, and a ping-pong and pool table. We also had a stationary bicycle and free weights and a weights bench. That's where I did my weight-training for youth hockey. But, we never had a bar, nor TV, nor the family entertainment centers nor recreation centers people have today. My cousins, next door, had a large, commercial-sized pinball machine, like they had in bars and arcades, back in the day.
The basement was my favorite part of the house growing up. You had full control of the TV. All your stuff like comic books ,games and sports cards were down there. There was a refrigerator in one room that I kept Kool Aid in all the time. LOL!
We didn't have it all that rough. Think about how Tina Turner grew up in St. Louis, with no toilet inside the house, and having to go out to an out-house in the backyard, in the middle of Winter! I can't imagine doing that in Winnipeg in 140 degrees below zero windchill, and having to sit bareassed on that cold wood seat! I count my blessings. One set of my grandparents grew up in a forest village in Lithuania, whose houses had no plumbing or running water. Their transportation was horses and wagons. There were no cars, trucks or airplanes. They had to take baths in metal washbasins, with hot water poured onto them [[after being heated in a large kettle on a pot-bellied stove). They had to carry water into the house in buckets. They also had an outhouse. They lived not far away from Finland and St. Petersburg, near 56 degrees north latitude. The climate there us similar to northern Quebec. They only went to school to the 8th grade, then had to work to help the family. Their marriage was arranged by their parents! The modern world hasn't been around very long at all! - only a few generations.
I understand and know exactly what you mean. I've seen those things traveling to the South of this country as kid in the 1960s with my parents. I even used an outhouse before.....Peee Uww! I think the conditions some people lived through made them stronger, more resourceful than people today. As a very young man, I walked, biked and took the bus everywhere. I did not have a car of my own until my early 20s. Kids in my family in the younger generation all have cars in high school. We walked to school from Kindergarten until I graduated from high school.
I walked to school, except when there was really deep snow. Then, I skied there [[like we do even today, in Skandinavia). And no one ever stole our skis. Nowadays, they'd have been stolen in minutes. I rode my bicycle all over Winnipeg when the roads weren't icy. That's my main transportation now, when I'm in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. I have a bicycle in L.A., too. But, I'd be killed within a few times riding, if I dared to ride it on city streets. Drivers in US cities drive way too fast, drive through too many stopsigns, too fast VERY late after their signals have been red a long time, and, generally, are not looking out for bicycle riders.
We walked to school in a large group of kids, with no adults. 12 and 11-year olds were old enough to watch out for the little ones. Our parents never had to worry about us being abducted by bad people. Yes, we were tougher and more worldly than our kids, and our grandparents were tougher than us. Everything is prescribed for kids now, and older people or machines do much too much for them.
I played Midget hockey with straight all wood sticks, very little padding as compared to today, and before even kids were wearing helmets, and before concussion protocol. You got knocked out, they'd carry you to the bench, give you smelling salts, and you'd go back in one or two shifts later. Maybe that's why I'm already losing LONG-term memory, early, at the tender age of 70?
They DID finally require youth players to wear helmets in 1964, but that was after my only year of Junior A, and I had moved to Chicago, and my hockey "career" was over. I did get a helmet for some Senior play, but hated it because it restricted my vision.
Still, I'm glad I grew up when I did. The World is too "crazy" now. I wouldn't want to have grown up in the 1970s or later. I was old fashioned enough in the 1950s.
I wouldn't have traded not having had TV when I was young for having it. We played board games, cards, read comic books, and when really small, we were told stories and had comic book and book stories told to us, mainly by our grandparents, who lived with us. As immigrants, we had lots of extended family around. We had about 30 people at our dinner tables on weekday evenings, and about 50 on weekends. I got to listen to stories about the old days and old countries from all 4 of my grandparents and a lot of great uncles and great aunts. I had bedtime stories told me, and my sisters and brother and first cousins [[we had 14 kids living basically together) by my grandparents. They told us all about their lives, and had a lot of fun telling us entertaining stories and Dutch, Lithuanian and Hungarian folk tales, and reading comic books to us, until we could read to them. I learned to speak and understand Dutch and Yiddish from them. As a result, we became very close to them. We each had the equivalence of 6 parents. When my grandparents died [[luckily, I was over 40 when all of them went, and almost 50 for both my father's parents), I felt like I had lost parents.
Also, I learned to really enjoy reading. And that first early love of comic books and comic art, led, eventually, to my enjoying a fun career and my life after 40, much more than I would have with an ordinary career.
And during days, we were outside playing sports, almost all the time, except when there was heavy rain or blizzards. Or we were exploring in the woods, or chasing animals. If there had been electronic games, computers, TV, videos, etc., I don't think I could have had the life I did, and I would be a very different person. I wouldn't know as much about history, geography, different cultures, nature, the easy-going life, and a lot of old fashion things. I'd have access to more information, but I wouldn't have had as personal an introduction to each thing, and learn it through the "context" of reading about it and looking at photos of it from a box's screen, instead of hearing about it from people I know well, who lived through it, seeing old photos of it, with people I knew in the photos, and even living through some things from past times that would have been history had I grown up 30-40 years later.
Maybe our own time is best for each of us. We like it because we know it best. We can't imagine ourselves being very different.
Last edited by robb_k; 12-08-2016 at 03:28 AM.
I'll never forget moving to Memphis in the mid-90s and driving along I-40 and seeing million dollar mansions in the suburbs only to then see tiny houses made out of rotten wood a few miles down the way. I've never seen something like that up north but I imagine that great divide in fortunes is not unique to the south.
And I never knew how many friends I had until I started driving to school in the 11th grade. LOL. After walking one and a half miles to junior high and two miles to high school, being able to make a 25 minute trip in five minutes made me popular in the neighborhood!
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