The Stone Ages

To help Vootz keep up on his work while his hand is in a cast he has been using a tape recorder. You know the old school kind you used in first grade at the listening centers. When his teacher handed it to him along with two cassette tapes he was baffled. When she left, he looked at me and said, "Mom, what is this?"

Me- Are you kidding me? It's a tape recorder.

Vootz- How does it work?

Me- Serious?

Vootz- What are these?

Me- Oh my gosh. *laughing* The tapes you record on.

I showed him how to work it and sent him off to his room to start recording math facts. A little while later he came back frustrated.

Me- What's wrong?

Vootz- I can't find the delete button. The boys interrupted me and now their yelling is on my tape.

Me- *laughing*

He has also been using the computer to "hunt and peck" his spelling work out on. Thursday night I was giving him a spelling test...

Vootz- Mom, I don't know how you failed typing in high school. This is so easy.

Me- Um let's see. It could be that we had to use actual type writers, not computers. There was no such thing as the delete button that you used three times just to spell the word Illinois. We had to look up at a projection on the wall in front of the class not at the keys and had to type what was on the overhead. We were graded on speed and accuracy. Oh, and the fact that I needed glasses and didn't know until the last week of the semester probably didn't help either.

It's sad that my kids didn't know what a cassette recorder was. It's sad that they have never seen a typewriter, a BETA VCR, a TV with out a remote, or a rotary phone. They have never played frogger on ATARI, and they don't understand that you can't instantly see the picture you took with a 35mm camera. They have never piled 6 deep into a car with vinyl seats, no seat belts, no AC, no DVD player, or video games in July to travel thousands of miles in the spirit of family adventure. Sad. But man I love technology.