My grandfather, my father's father, used to say that all the time. And he had a host of examples. One of his favorites was TV. Whenever he'd visit my folks and I'd have the remote and be flipping from channel to channel, he'd tell me about how, back in the old days, you couldn't channel flip and you had to turn a knob to go to different channels and how the screen would roll when you flipped and how sometimes you watched a show you hated just because it was on the channel with the clearest signal and how . . .
I'd eventually lose interest because, yes, I didn't know what it was like.
I had no idea. I was just getting past the idea that little people lived inside the TV. I didn't have time to travel back to a period I never experienced, a time of rabbit ears and foil on the antennas and TV stations that all stopped broadcasting at midnight.
But one thing I've realized this decade is that even now, when I really can't grasp what he went through, I can grasp some pretty dramatic changes.
Back in 2003, when I would listen to an online stream, I was used to the stop and start of it. Today, if I'm streaming video, say American Dad, and the stream stops and starts, I'm having a fit. The photo is of one of my favorite where Roger flashes Hayley something he's painted on (what is left to the imagination).
We've moved from dial up connections -- which once seemed so amazing -- to DSL and wireless. And we expect what we want when we want it.
When I was in high school, a couple of friends used to use some service to download movies. It was illegal which was one of the reasons I never tried. But along with the fear of being caught was how long it took. They'd have to start the download around midnight and it would finish around eight in the morning. Can you imagine anyone waiting that long for a download today?
But they'd show up with a burned copy of The Matrix or whatever, from their external DVD drive (yes, external, DVD drives were not standard for computers back then), and think they'd just done the most amazing thing in the world. And we'd all agree. Wow. A movie. Downloaded to the computer. In only eight hours!!!
After Ava and C.I.'s "TV: Specials," I watched the Joni Mitchell BBC special online and so did a few of our readers some of whom e-mailed (thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com) to complain that they'd downloaded it to their computers and the music on the download was out of sync with the video. A few years back, we might have griped some but no one would consider that necessarily unacceptable. It's a sign of how much more is now available online that we expect even more. And the things that we're thinking of as progress from the first half of this decade? A whole new group of people have grown up expecting and seeing as normal. Soon, like my grandfather, we'll be the ones insisting, "You don't know what it's like."
And on things available online, Mike's been asking for this photo to be posted forever. C.I. fixed Mike sushi and other dishes while we were all together last month on vacation and Mike wanted to post this photo at his site. But Ty, Jess, Dona and I keep forgetting to download it.
