11/ 23/ 2004
by Harvey King
Perhaps because I recently turned 50, I have all of a sudden been swept up in a fit of nostalgia for what it was like when I ran a small business back in the good old days.
Back in the good old days, I could have an entire phone conversation without discovering I’ve been talking for 30 seconds to mid-air because my cell phone had dropped the call. In fact, I can remember having an entire phone conversation without asking the question, “Are you still there?”
Back in the good old days, phone calls could go as long as two or three minutes without hearing some beep or click or buzz letting me know the other person has someone more important than me trying to reach them. I can even remember when phones rang a normal ring, instead of announcing a call by playing the theme song of a TV show I’ve never watched.
Back in the good old days, I could sit in an airport waiting area and not have to listen to someone else’s phone conversation where they describe to the person who just dropped them off how they made it through security and walked down the corridor and are now having a phone conversation.
Back in the good old days, when I went to the airport, I didn’t have to worry about making sure the socks I wore didn’t have holes in them. And if I think back far enough, I can even remember leaving a laptop in a computer bag when sending it through an X-ray machine.
Back in the good old days, I didn’t have to type on a keyboard the size of a postage stamp. Back then (and my kids can’t believe this), we actually spelled with letters, as in the word “great,” instead of with numbers, as in the word “gr8.”
Speaking of things my kids don’t believe, they are amazed when I tell them that back in the good old days when I used a typewriter, I didn’t have to press buttons saying “save” or “print” to get a saved and printed document. And in the good old days, the words on that piece of paper wouldn’t vanish forever if the dog chewed through the power cord.
Speaking of the good old days and children, they used to marvel that I only had three TV stations when I was growing up. Now, we can collectively marvel at the good old days when we didn’t have TiVo. I lose them, however, when I say something like, “Yeah, back in the good old days I had to watch it live when men walked around on the moon.”
