I may be one of the few people who doesn't live with the cell in my hand. But I'm 80, so a phone isn't that fascinating. And I admit, who owns a camera these days when your phone takes better photos? I wonder if cells contribute to mental decline; I used to know 20 phone numbers off the top of my head, but now I have trouble remembering my own! Your childhood sounds like mine! Out all day in good weather. NO AC - anywhere. It hadn't been invented yet. TV was a rare thing - saw it on Saturday morning at a friend's house- Sky King, Lassie, Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers - westerns were big. Fifty cents could take you to the movies (cost a quarter to get in on Saturday), soda & popcorn. Now, popcorn and a soda cost more than the movie ticket! If you owned a watch before you were 18, you were rich. The world will never be that innocent again. Or that big, or that magical, or that safe.
I just read that a study shows that older people who are proficient on their smart phones are less likely to develop dementia. I have several puzzle games that I play each day. I hope that will keep my mind alert!
I will be 71 this year and lived in the country. Our bike rides were down gravel and dirt roads. If you fell down and got scraped, you went to the nearest house and used the water hose to wash out the gravel (and no one came out screaming) and continued on your way.
You described my childhood to the tee, which is remarkable because I am a good bit older than you. Some of the kids knew it was time to go in because the street lights came on, and others went in when called. Everyone knew it was our Mom calling us and would alert us if we were so focused on the playing that we missed the call. She was the only Mom in the Ohio neighborhood that called, “Y’all c’mon!” There was one other recognizable Mom who shouted to her brood in German. We had big fun playing in the woods, riding our bikes, and inventing whole pretend worlds that were so much fun. Trying to recreate them the next day never worked, but it was no bother. We simply invented a new game or universe in which to play. It was wonderful.
As a young adult in my new career, I observed a member of my flight crew become ridiculously addicted to a Pacman machine. I tried it once or twice. It wasted my quarter and my time. I thought it was boring and I got no thrill or reward over points or levels. My coworker would bring along rolls of quarters and disappear to the machine for hours and sometimes all night. It was obvious that he was addicted as to a drug. I’m against drugs.
As my kid came along, I absolutely forbid the entrance of video games to my house. Kids coming around would scour our TV area for gamer controls and express extreme disappointment when they found out we didn’t have any. Our daughter bravely tried to entice her friends outside to play with the dog and cats, to ride her horse, to ride her ATV, or a bike. We had a basketball hoop and balls of all descriptions, plus plenty of room to play. We have acreage and they can run a long way and still be in the yard, (watch out for the cow patties), and there are trees to climb. It was a wonderland for a kid and our daughter was being raised without those addictive influences. She came to have very few repeat visitors, poor kid. When she would go to her friends’ homes, she would report that it was boring. All they wanted to do was play video games. I asked if she played and she confessed that she did. I never forbade her to play, I just wasn’t having it in my house. She didn’t want to play because she knew I was against them. She tried it though and expressed that it was fun at first, but she got bored. They wanted to play and play. My kid liked (still likes) to play outside.
Time marches on and I have felt very alone on my stance against the addictive nature of these games being very bad for kids. Hand-eye coordination? Give me a break. Can they hit a baseball? Can they shoot a 3-pointer? Can they drive a golf ball onto the green? I am hopelessly sports-impaired, so I can’t do any of those things, but I can land a big jet on a dime in any weather, I’m an experienced marksman at the range, I can run until you make me quit (never fast, but my stamina/stubbornness is quite high), as a youngster, I was a contender at bowling (I quit when the boys wouldn’t play with me, and often, said boys would stop talking to me all together - I was that good. I gave it up for love), and I brought other talents to the table all hardened in the crucible of the playground and classroom competition.
Anyway, I do not believe that video games are good for anything except as a parent’s babysitter, and does no good and harms the child in the long run. There is no “reset” button in life. The themes in some of these games are shocking and the idea that kids are allowed to fantasize in that way hour after hour still shocks me.
On the other hand - cellphones are just as addictive. I’m afraid I got sucked in. First I used it to keep tabs on my kid. As a traveling parent, staying in contact became important to me. I signed up for social media to lurk my daughter. She never really got into it. She still rarely posts, but lurks me. I took up marathon running a while back and found a large group of new “friends” as I was learning about this sport. Slowly I started making my own posts about this and that. It was some years ago that I realized I was addicted. I don’t go very far into my morning before I’m checking email, news headlines (while the news is on TV no less), responding to any texts or emails that need attention, checking the weather, and general social media scrolling. My watch connects to my phone, and buzzes me off and on all day with notifications of breaking news, weather alerts, or how I’m doing on my daily exercise goals. I admit - it’s madness. I have been reading a paper book and running across a word I don’t know, absentmindedly push on the word to get at a definition. 🙄 Realizing my silly error and eye rolling myself, I pick up my phone to look up the word.
🤷♀️ I have no answer. It’s a suckhole. An irresistible mire. When I lose track of mine, luckily my watch can find it. 😜
Thanks for stating my feelings so succinctly. I'm almost 76 and doing a lot of 'old days' ruminating. Find myself gazing out the HandyDart window hoping to see some kids running. Never happens.
My favorite childhood telephone? Two tin cans and a piece of string. Hmm. Today's kids have absolutely NO idea how to use my kind of phone. "Keep the string tight Susie." "I don't know how" she replies. Yep. Generational smartness is real but challenging to pass on.
I’m 62, and lived so far back in the woods, they had to pipe sunshine back to us. I remember those days of staying outside ALL day. Running barefoot. Stepping in chicken poop, but kept on going lol. Riding my bike, listening to the screen door slam. Oh, how I loved my childhood. We wasn’t rich, had hardly nothing at all, but we were so very happy. I’m thankful that I lived during the time when, there wasn’t any cell phones, and all the stuff we have now. We didn’t even have a phone period. I wish my grand babies could have known the childhood I grew up in. They would love it. Thanks for bringing me down memory lane.
Shirts & skins;playing chase; red rover; Marco Polo; zinc for noses and vinegar baths for sunburns; gravel infused raspberries on knees from homemade bike ramps; hot spigot water; sterno and beanie weenies; kill the carrier; cut offs and tube tops; etc etc. We all had “community” bc the “neighborhood” hadn’t died yet.
The saddest thing I see nowadays is kids sitting around texting rather than talking to each other. Each is in their own little world rather than interacting with the world around them.
new job that entailed a long commute is what caused me to cave. As time goes on social media groups are losing their shine for me with all the arguing.
There are ‘Pharisees’ even in supposed Christian groups. The traffic groups and local police groups have people commenting for the laughs. Even if the subject matter is nothing to laugh about. I have left some groups or skip reading the comments in others.
The cell phone is really a computer with a phone app. It’s become rife with scammers, charlatans and imposters. And don’t get me started on the ads. It’s nice to look up information but even that I take with a grain of salt.
Mornings I play words games with my coffee to jumpstart my brain. Check the weather. Read a devotion. Read your column. Nights I listen to sermons watch old shows via YouTube on my IPad. I rarely have the television on.
Yesterday’s weather was glorious, I worked in the yard for most of it. (I never take the phone with me outdoors and mostly forget to take it with me when I leave the house.) Anyway, yesterday was good, a lot was accomplished and I have a nice bruise to show for it. You’re right, as kids we were covered with them. My knees were always scabby, lol.
I too was once somewhat rabid about the cell phone but it keeps us from doing the things we should. Doing life.
Never will I forget the (successful attorney) Patriarch of a family we raised our own children alongside bragging endlessly about his Stanford scholarship daughter visting with new equally academically brilliant boyfriend whiledetailing how neither of them could figure out how to fill the bike tires to go for a ride together...daddy came and showed them/ did it. Or perhaps they YouTubed it- from their phones.
I would give ANYTHING TO GO BACK to that life of pure bliss. I loathe this world that prays to the altars of BigTech.
I may be one of the few people who doesn't live with the cell in my hand. But I'm 80, so a phone isn't that fascinating. And I admit, who owns a camera these days when your phone takes better photos? I wonder if cells contribute to mental decline; I used to know 20 phone numbers off the top of my head, but now I have trouble remembering my own! Your childhood sounds like mine! Out all day in good weather. NO AC - anywhere. It hadn't been invented yet. TV was a rare thing - saw it on Saturday morning at a friend's house- Sky King, Lassie, Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers - westerns were big. Fifty cents could take you to the movies (cost a quarter to get in on Saturday), soda & popcorn. Now, popcorn and a soda cost more than the movie ticket! If you owned a watch before you were 18, you were rich. The world will never be that innocent again. Or that big, or that magical, or that safe.
I just read that a study shows that older people who are proficient on their smart phones are less likely to develop dementia. I have several puzzle games that I play each day. I hope that will keep my mind alert!
I'm an almost-76-year-old-fart thinking eggzackly the same.
I will be 71 this year and lived in the country. Our bike rides were down gravel and dirt roads. If you fell down and got scraped, you went to the nearest house and used the water hose to wash out the gravel (and no one came out screaming) and continued on your way.
Yep, nice old days. You fixed your bike in your own too!
It was either fix it or walk.
Remember calling on the phone to find out the TIME?!
And the weather!
Good one!
For us, it was to find out the temperature, but it did state the time too.
Yes!!!
So true. The addiction is real.
You described my childhood to the tee, which is remarkable because I am a good bit older than you. Some of the kids knew it was time to go in because the street lights came on, and others went in when called. Everyone knew it was our Mom calling us and would alert us if we were so focused on the playing that we missed the call. She was the only Mom in the Ohio neighborhood that called, “Y’all c’mon!” There was one other recognizable Mom who shouted to her brood in German. We had big fun playing in the woods, riding our bikes, and inventing whole pretend worlds that were so much fun. Trying to recreate them the next day never worked, but it was no bother. We simply invented a new game or universe in which to play. It was wonderful.
As a young adult in my new career, I observed a member of my flight crew become ridiculously addicted to a Pacman machine. I tried it once or twice. It wasted my quarter and my time. I thought it was boring and I got no thrill or reward over points or levels. My coworker would bring along rolls of quarters and disappear to the machine for hours and sometimes all night. It was obvious that he was addicted as to a drug. I’m against drugs.
As my kid came along, I absolutely forbid the entrance of video games to my house. Kids coming around would scour our TV area for gamer controls and express extreme disappointment when they found out we didn’t have any. Our daughter bravely tried to entice her friends outside to play with the dog and cats, to ride her horse, to ride her ATV, or a bike. We had a basketball hoop and balls of all descriptions, plus plenty of room to play. We have acreage and they can run a long way and still be in the yard, (watch out for the cow patties), and there are trees to climb. It was a wonderland for a kid and our daughter was being raised without those addictive influences. She came to have very few repeat visitors, poor kid. When she would go to her friends’ homes, she would report that it was boring. All they wanted to do was play video games. I asked if she played and she confessed that she did. I never forbade her to play, I just wasn’t having it in my house. She didn’t want to play because she knew I was against them. She tried it though and expressed that it was fun at first, but she got bored. They wanted to play and play. My kid liked (still likes) to play outside.
Time marches on and I have felt very alone on my stance against the addictive nature of these games being very bad for kids. Hand-eye coordination? Give me a break. Can they hit a baseball? Can they shoot a 3-pointer? Can they drive a golf ball onto the green? I am hopelessly sports-impaired, so I can’t do any of those things, but I can land a big jet on a dime in any weather, I’m an experienced marksman at the range, I can run until you make me quit (never fast, but my stamina/stubbornness is quite high), as a youngster, I was a contender at bowling (I quit when the boys wouldn’t play with me, and often, said boys would stop talking to me all together - I was that good. I gave it up for love), and I brought other talents to the table all hardened in the crucible of the playground and classroom competition.
Anyway, I do not believe that video games are good for anything except as a parent’s babysitter, and does no good and harms the child in the long run. There is no “reset” button in life. The themes in some of these games are shocking and the idea that kids are allowed to fantasize in that way hour after hour still shocks me.
On the other hand - cellphones are just as addictive. I’m afraid I got sucked in. First I used it to keep tabs on my kid. As a traveling parent, staying in contact became important to me. I signed up for social media to lurk my daughter. She never really got into it. She still rarely posts, but lurks me. I took up marathon running a while back and found a large group of new “friends” as I was learning about this sport. Slowly I started making my own posts about this and that. It was some years ago that I realized I was addicted. I don’t go very far into my morning before I’m checking email, news headlines (while the news is on TV no less), responding to any texts or emails that need attention, checking the weather, and general social media scrolling. My watch connects to my phone, and buzzes me off and on all day with notifications of breaking news, weather alerts, or how I’m doing on my daily exercise goals. I admit - it’s madness. I have been reading a paper book and running across a word I don’t know, absentmindedly push on the word to get at a definition. 🙄 Realizing my silly error and eye rolling myself, I pick up my phone to look up the word.
🤷♀️ I have no answer. It’s a suckhole. An irresistible mire. When I lose track of mine, luckily my watch can find it. 😜
Thanks for stating my feelings so succinctly. I'm almost 76 and doing a lot of 'old days' ruminating. Find myself gazing out the HandyDart window hoping to see some kids running. Never happens.
I am laughing so hard & can relate to it all…Thanks Sean for a fabulous trip down memory lane!! 💖💕💖
My favorite childhood telephone? Two tin cans and a piece of string. Hmm. Today's kids have absolutely NO idea how to use my kind of phone. "Keep the string tight Susie." "I don't know how" she replies. Yep. Generational smartness is real but challenging to pass on.
I tried that in my childhood too!
Great Memories!! I am so thankful I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s.
I’m 62, and lived so far back in the woods, they had to pipe sunshine back to us. I remember those days of staying outside ALL day. Running barefoot. Stepping in chicken poop, but kept on going lol. Riding my bike, listening to the screen door slam. Oh, how I loved my childhood. We wasn’t rich, had hardly nothing at all, but we were so very happy. I’m thankful that I lived during the time when, there wasn’t any cell phones, and all the stuff we have now. We didn’t even have a phone period. I wish my grand babies could have known the childhood I grew up in. They would love it. Thanks for bringing me down memory lane.
Shirts & skins;playing chase; red rover; Marco Polo; zinc for noses and vinegar baths for sunburns; gravel infused raspberries on knees from homemade bike ramps; hot spigot water; sterno and beanie weenies; kill the carrier; cut offs and tube tops; etc etc. We all had “community” bc the “neighborhood” hadn’t died yet.
The saddest thing I see nowadays is kids sitting around texting rather than talking to each other. Each is in their own little world rather than interacting with the world around them.
I’ve been so stupid before that when I couldn’t find my phone, I’ve thought if I could just find it, I could call it to see where it was! Whaaattt???
That’s why you need an Apple Watch. It can ping yiur phone and help you find it!
I was a latecomer getting a smart phone. A
new job that entailed a long commute is what caused me to cave. As time goes on social media groups are losing their shine for me with all the arguing.
There are ‘Pharisees’ even in supposed Christian groups. The traffic groups and local police groups have people commenting for the laughs. Even if the subject matter is nothing to laugh about. I have left some groups or skip reading the comments in others.
The cell phone is really a computer with a phone app. It’s become rife with scammers, charlatans and imposters. And don’t get me started on the ads. It’s nice to look up information but even that I take with a grain of salt.
Mornings I play words games with my coffee to jumpstart my brain. Check the weather. Read a devotion. Read your column. Nights I listen to sermons watch old shows via YouTube on my IPad. I rarely have the television on.
Yesterday’s weather was glorious, I worked in the yard for most of it. (I never take the phone with me outdoors and mostly forget to take it with me when I leave the house.) Anyway, yesterday was good, a lot was accomplished and I have a nice bruise to show for it. You’re right, as kids we were covered with them. My knees were always scabby, lol.
I too was once somewhat rabid about the cell phone but it keeps us from doing the things we should. Doing life.
Sean. I’m proud of you! At least you found the flashlight in your phone. Lol
Very true Sean! My kids think that's weired , boring life. Wait seeing what's coming next in this " AI" ?!!
Sometimes I go to the store without it, on purpose. But you van bet the first thing I do when I get back is to check what I missed.
Mine has become my security blanket. At my age and my heart problems I keep mine close by to be able to contact 911
Never will I forget the (successful attorney) Patriarch of a family we raised our own children alongside bragging endlessly about his Stanford scholarship daughter visting with new equally academically brilliant boyfriend whiledetailing how neither of them could figure out how to fill the bike tires to go for a ride together...daddy came and showed them/ did it. Or perhaps they YouTubed it- from their phones.
I would give ANYTHING TO GO BACK to that life of pure bliss. I loathe this world that prays to the altars of BigTech.