The Good Old Days

I have a confession to make. I am addicted to my cellphone. I’m not proud of it. I don’t like admitting it. But I’m coming clean, publicly.

I feel naked without my phone. I shower with my phone. In fact, on many occasions—I am not making this up—I have ordered dog food in the shower.

It’s gotten bad. When I wake up, the first thing I do is check my phone. When I make coffee, I’m reading email.

When I wander outside to let my dogs sniff every blade of grass in the known universe simply so they can pee in the exact same spot they’ve peed upon for the last 3,298,119 consecutive mornings, I’m scrolling social media, viewing photographs from people I don’t even know, reading about what they ate for supper last night.

I’m hopeless.

Last night, for example, I lost my cellphone in the car, and it was dark. I looked for my phone for 15 minutes, USING THE FLASHLIGHT OF MY PHONE.

This is shameful. There used to be a time when we had no smartphones. I remember the tech-free era because I grew up during this period.

My generation had no computers, no cellphones, no smartwatches, indoor plumbing, etc. We entertained ourselves with only Highlights Magazines, Slinkys, and Polio vaccines.

You see, kids, during my childhood, shortly after the Spanish-American War, our phones were not smart. They were dumb phones. They were big, black phones which could only be installed by the phone company. They were Soviet-style phones, mounted in the kitchen, with 500-foot cords, rotary dials.

Back then, our phones were made of steel, industrial plastic, and asbestos. The phones weighed about 1,900 pounds and—hard as this is to believe—they did not even shoot good video.

Even so, as a kid, you spent very little time talking on a phone. Namely, because you were always on your bike.

You grew up on your bike. Your bicycle was your life. That’s how you lived. On two wheels.

You rode your bike everywhere. It was your only connection to the outside world. You had a permanent bike-seat imprint on your tiny buttocks.

You rode your bike on every street. Down giant hills. Across railroad tracks. Over the Appalachians. On busy highways. You would go anywhere on your bike. You were fearless.

There were no GPS’s, your mind was your GPS. You knew where ever treehouse, fort, filling station, and neighborhood ball field was located.

You played Little League ball. You spent a lot of time in the woods. You dammed up creeks and constructed dangerous rope swings that were a lawsuit waiting to happen.

You were feral. Mangy. You built campfires just because you could. You had ticks embedded in your scalp.

You and your friends purchased barely legal bottle rockets from fireworks stands, oftentimes launching these bottle rockets from well-known orifices of your body.

You were away from home for entire presidential administrations, and would not return until you heard your mother’s voice shout that supper was ready.

And your supper wasn’t glamorous. Your supper consisted of gluten, trans fats, lots of carbs, and lethal chemical dyes which are known to cause cancer in California.

And oftentimes your mother cooked entire meals at her stove without ever once dropping the unfiltered Camel from the corner of her mouth.

That’s how you grew up. We were always covered in bruises. You broke every bone in your body at least thrice.

We were perpetually sunburned. And the only screens we stared at were the ones that kept the flies out of the kitchen.

We wore shoes only on days of the week ending in G or L. We ate food directly off the ground.

We scavenged our pennies and bought Red Man from the gas station and watched our friend Luke Anderson puke in the bushes.

We bought candy cigarettes, Big League Chew, and licorice whips.

We didn’t have Google to double check random facts, we just lied to each other.

for directions you used a Rand McNally map. And if you got lost, you died.

And books. You actually read books. Real books. Comic books. National Geographics, and if you were a Baptist boy, you read Cosmopolitan Magazine. (“Page 22—The undiscovered joys of having an atheist lover.”)

You were capable of reading for entire hours without moving a single muscle. You could focus on paragraphs like a Jedi knight.

We had no social media except Auto Trader, Thrifty Nickel, and notes passed in class. (Do you think Adam is cute? Check Yes or No.)

There were no computers in cars. AM radio was still the best way to catch a Braves game. The greatest thrill of all was getting kissed. Either that or beer.

Yeah, I know we are living in the Age of Information. But I’m afraid the human race has gotten so smart that my phone is now smarter than I am.

P.S. I wrote this on my phone

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