You don’t even know how good you have it. When we were your age we had to get directions to drive places. We had to ask people we didn’t even know- people in gas stations, toll booths- how to help us if we got lost. We didn’t have navigation systems on our phones, or in our cars, we didn’t even have Mapquest until I was in college!
We had to wait in line at the super market with nothing to do but stand there. No talking on the phone, no playing solitaire or checking Facebook. Just stand there and wait. It was torture. We had to wait with nothing to do on the train and on the bus- unless we were clever enough to bring a book or a magazine or our Discman. But even then we had to stuff our purses with books and magazines and Discmen. A Discman is a portable CD player. It’s like an MP3 player, but much bigger and heavier and required a constant diet of AA batteries. Early versions of Discmen would skip if you didn’t hold them steady and horizontally.
Our emails were all on a computer, and we had to go to that computer to check the emails. To be on the internet we needed a wire plugged into the computer and into the wall. To stay in touch with old friends, or out-of-town friends, we had to call them from a phone plugged into the wall. The phone didn’t do anything but make calls.
It was a difficult life. It was slow and quiet and full of solitude if you needed it. Wait, actually, it was pretty sweet. Except I love my iPod and would be dead without my iPhone.
I lived for my Discman. Also, you had to carry around like 5 CD’s at all times in their cases.