Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Kids Are So Funny


Every year some group, I'm not sure who, comes out with a list of things about this year's entering college freshmen's view of life.

I love reading these things, because, at 44, these things make me laugh.

Plus they give me good ammunition for firing back wisecracks when Number One and Number Two Daughters get a bit too sassy with me.

Here are a few examples of what I'm talking about for the whipper-snappers that were born in 1988...

1. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.

23. Bar codes have always been on everything, from library cards and snail mail to retail items.

24. Madden has always been a game, not a Superbowl-winning coach.

In the photos from my childhood that I posted yesterday, you can see my parent's old TV set and the channel change dial on the upper right front of it.

Seeing that had me yelling out for them to come look at this photo and exclaim about how way back, when we wanted to change the channel, we had to get up, out of our chair, walk across the room and manually change the channel. Then stand there and wait to see if what you changed it to interests you enough to leave it or not.

Whew! TV watchin' was hard work!

That prompted Number One Daughter and her boyfriend to roll their eyes and start making wise cracks about "Uh, Oh! Here come the stories about how you had to walk ten miles to school every day, through the snow…"

To which I replied, "Yes, and it was uphill BOTH WAYS."

Which earned me a derisive snort from them. (Hmmm. I just realized that maybe they know there are no hills in Louisiana.)

But it was all in good fun.

Hey, if I have to keep getting older and hurt more, I might as well have some fun whenever I can, and at the expense of the yungun's, right?

Now the whole point of this post is to talk about something Number One Daughter did when she was little.

We were living in Bedford, Texas at the time (between Dallas and Fort Worth) and Lovely Wife took Number One Daughter to the store, some old KMART or something.

I guess Lovely Wife was going for a bargain or something at a different store, and it was one she had never taken our Daughter to.

So they amble up to the door and Number One Daughter runs ahead and just stands in front of the door, waits what she feels is an appropriate amount of time, and says, "OPEN!"

It was her first experience with a store that was old enough to not have automatic opening doors.

Lovely Wife got a kick out of that one, and had to show her to open the door by pushing on the bar…

Now in Number One Daughter's defense, she was only about two or three, but when we are at a loss for something to come back at her with for a smart remark on her part, that's one of the things we bring up, as if she should have known better. (By the way, that's a picture of her with her maternal grandfather, Poppy, up there at the top. I know she has pillow hair and everything, but this was taken at about the age I was talking about here, and it was the only picture of her at this age that I already had scanned.)

Good times, good times.

6 comments:

Barb said...

The first can my daughter bought was older than she was. I had to help her set the radio channels. She didn't know you had to pull the little thing out then push it back in. Remember pressing the thing on the floor to turn your brights on? I really miss that.

Barb said...

first CAR sheesh

JAM said...

I understood what you meant. I miss the foot dimmer switch too. Cars today have thirteen things on what used to be just the wiper control and the turn signal thingy. Every car is different so I invariably turn on wipers when I meant to turn on lights or whatever.

Emily said...

We didn't have much money when I was little so we had a super super old manual channel adjust tv =P We got a new one eventually, but we still kept that tv up till last year! My brother used it for his video games. Ah, good times.

JAM said...

Emily, that's cool about the old TV. Did your brother finally get sick of it and "accidentally" throw a brick through the screen?

It's tough being a video game generation kid and not having the right plugs on your game tv.

I understand though. We use things until they give up the ghost at our house too.

Teena in Toronto said...

Thanks for making me feel old :)