Looking back

It cracks me up everytime I hear of some anecdote about young fellows being clueless about contraptions or simple everyday objects from a previous era. One instance had a teenage girl stumped by a rotary-dial telephone. "Grandma, how do you use this thing?" she asked, obviously born in the age of push-button

appliances or probably mobile phones already. I read that in a magazine article that had a collection of stories of such cross-generational inquiries.

Then there was another young girl who, upon seeing a vinyl long-playing album for the first time, quipped something like "Wow, grandma/grandpa! You sure had big CDs back then..." I read that, too.

And a few years ago, a colleague related how his preschool-aged daughters came running to him and excitedly reported, "Dad, we found something weird," and showed the "weird" thing to him. It was a cassette tape.

I've blogged about vintage stuff several times already. This and this are a couple of posts about it, which I hope you enjoy reading.