Being a Kid Today Vs. Being a Kid in the 1970s

I was talking to my daughter on the phone the other day and I had said about all I needed to say. So I said, "I'm going to hang up and talk to you later."She asked me what "hang up" meant.

I laughed because she never had a telephone that hung on the kitchen wall while she was growing up like people my age did.

Which got me to thinking about more differences between when I was her age in the early 1970s and today.

The first one that jumps out is technology. When I was thirteen, I was playing Pac Man. She can get just about any game on her iPhone. And with her having a phone and the parents being able to track it, we can tell exactly where she is almost all of the time. While in my day we just needed to be home "before the street lights came on."

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Playground equipment at my elementary school would be considered an article of torture today. The rings, monkey bars, and tetherball games. All with asphalt underneath. In our nearby park, you had to choose between spinning on a steel merry-go-round until you barfed or burning your skin on the polished aluminum slide. Good times.

When I told her that I used to mow our family's yard and then go across the street and mow our neighbor's yard for five dollars, she couldn't believe it. We also used to collect aluminum cans, beer, and soda bottles and recycle them. So I'd spend half of a Saturday in dumpsters and walking ditches to make four or five dollars.

But, as I told her, the moral of my story is to really appreciate what you've got because of what you did to get there.