When I Was Your Age

By Doug

It doesn't feel that long ago, but at one point my generation was the one that was on the bleeding edge of...well, everything, it seemed. Technology, television, music...these were items that were geared and marketed to us. So, we'd have access to all kinds of new-fangled things like Walkmans, Nintendos, computers, and cable television. All the while, our parents and grandparents would tell us, "You don't know how easy you've got it. Back in our day..."

Now that I'm 35, I'm no longer in the coveted (in marketing terms) 18-34 demographic group. In other words, I (and others my age) no longer matter to advertisers. Their focus for movies, TV, and tech, is now on the next crop of kids, teens, and twenty-somethings.

Interestingly, and almost without skipping a beat, I'm now see my generation do the same thing to the next group of kids that previous generations have done to us.

Without, I might add, any sense of irony.

Now, we're the ones that tell our kids/teens, "man, you don't know how lucky you've got it. In our day, we didn't have iPods. We had to carry around stacks of CDs with our Discmans. And don't even get me started on the audio bitrates of our mp3s, which we could only listen to only on our computers!"

I bring this up, because I'm guilty of doing it to my child.

I don't remember what it was we were watching, but while Brady and I were sitting in front of the TV, Stacey calls. She needs us to pick her up from school. So, I tell Brady to get her coat, because we need to pick up Mommy.

"But we're going to miss the best part!"

"Yes, but Mommy needs us."

"But we're going to miss the best part!"

"*sigh* Okay. I'll pause the show, and we can come back to it when we get home."

"Okay!"

"By the way, do you know how lucky you are? When I was a kid, I didn't have a DVR, or the ability to pause live TV, or skip commercials. I just watched what was available, and if I was lucky, I had a blank VCR cassette around to tape the show if I wanted to watch it again."

At that point, I felt like I should have added "...and furthermore, we wrote our homework on parchment, with quill pens. Quill pens!"

It's funny how we talk about the "hardships" we went through when we were kids, like we survived trench warfare or the Black Death. And it's not like we didn't want what's around now; I remember wishing I had one of those old handheld black and white televisions that would allow me to watch any over-the-air station in all its snowy glory, anywhere I want (Today, if you have a phone and a Slingplayer, you're pretty much have TV on the go). We didn't have the things that our kids have now; we just wished we did.

The fact is, Brady isn't going to have the same type of life I had growing up. She doesn't know life without Netflix, mp3 players, or the Internet. She doesn't know that the only way to discover music was to go to the local record store and flip through cassettes or CDs they had. Is that really so bad, though? Not really -- it's not like I grew up and discovered things the same way that my parents did. Why should she follow the path I made?

Besides, I get to look forward to watching her grow up and have kids of her own. Not just because I'll be a grandfather (though that'll be cool), but also because I'll get to watch her kids have access to things that she could only dream of. Then I'll get to hear her say those magic words:

"When I was your age..."