Be Patient With Me… I’m from the 1900’s
Back when HBO was the cable channel — and the world only had three others — I had the TV guide memorized and my week planned out. Star Trek came on every night at 5. We watched it until supper was ready, which usually meant Hamburger Helper. (Cheeseburger flavor, obviously. Elite.)
We didn’t call it a “remote.” We called it a clicker, because it had a cord and made a real click when you used it.
Automatic garage door opener? Not a thing. When the car honked in the driveway, you jumped up from the couch and became the garage door opener.
And if you don’t understand how hanging out at the mall was the pinnacle of fun, I’m sorry — you missed out.
It was the bomb.
(Translation for Gen Z: the mall was “on fire.”)
We shopped at Sears. We circled our Christmas wish lists in the giant catalog with a ballpoint pen.
We booted up the Commodore 64 and manually typed in the programming code just to play Pong. No cartridge? No problem. Just give us 30 minutes and the patience of a monk.
Texting? Ha. When it finally arrived, you had to press the "7" key four times just to get an "S."
If you wanted to find the phone, you followed the cord — into the bathroom, a bedroom, or anywhere someone had retreated to talk in peace.
By 1984, things had kicked into high gear.
On the radio, Van Halen had us jumping with Jump, Lionel Richie asked a nation, Hello, is it me you’re looking for?, and Cyndi Lauper reminded everyone that Girls Just Want to Have Fun.
At the movies, we were busting ghosts, practicing crane kicks, and watching little gremlins turn from cute to pure chaos.
Ghostbusters, The Karate Kid, and Gremlins weren’t just movies — they were events.
All in one year.
It was idyllic — and it wasn’t. Parts of it were totally rad, sure, but we slap on our rose-colored glasses and conveniently forget the weird smells and emotional damage.
We all carry some 1900s trauma.
Those dark days were real — latchkey kids, questionable parenting advice, and school desks that doubled as Cold War fallout shelters.
But in the places we were broken, we grew resilient.
We learned to fix things with duct tape and sarcasm.
I remember being so annoyed that my grandparents refused to even try new technology. I swore I’d never be like that.
So here I am: nostalgic, but not stuck. Forever updating my apps and buying the latest iPhone.
Because while I’ll always appreciate the 1900s in a rosy-retrospective kind of way…
I am also so flipping excited for my Optimus robot and self-driving car.
It’s going to be the bomb.