2012 ...My How Things Have Changed #Monday Listicles

This week’s Monday Listicles topic “List of Ten Clues You are Living in 2012” was courtesy of Anja. It appears I have reached that point in my life where I find I am using the phrase “when I grew up…” waaaay too often. What "I" want to know is when did THAT happen!!!  *sigh* 

So my list this week is a bit of a flashback to how things were when I was a kid and how things have uhhhh changed. Yes I know I am SO dating myself but come…take a stroll down memory lane with me won’t you?    

1.      June 27, 2012. That was the date set as the “destination time” in the original Back to the Future movie back in 1985. I remember watching the movie and thinking by 2012 we would surely be like the Jetsons with robots and travelling around in hover cars. What. Twenty-seven years seems like forever to a 25 year old.

2.      When I finally decided to take the plunge and get a cell phone, the Motorola flip phone (circa 1993) was the one for me. There would be no tucking this baby in your pants pocket or evening clutch for that matter. It did come with a skookum belt clip however the weight of the phone was enough to pull your pants down for a look not unlike the “low-riding” pants of today.

3.      Growing up, my mom worked for a small company who distributed products from Japan. I remember being one of the first families in our neighbourhood who got a microwave oven. It was about the size of a small fridge, weighed a ton which almost required our counter top to be reinforced with rebar and had a cooking power of about 600W. Nothing was digital (it had a dial for the timer); nothing rotated (you actually had to turn the plate yourself) but having the ability to defrost/cook something in under a minute was a miracle!

4.      I am sure Stasha will vouch for me when I say there was a generation of cameras before the fancy-schmancy digital models of today. One of my best childhood friends had a “box” camera (not unlike the one in the picture). Even though I was deliberate in taking pictures due to the cost of film and developing, it wasn’t uncommon to come out with only one or two useable photos in a roll of 36.  *sigh* 

5.      If you are old enough to remember box cameras you will surely remember the introduction of the cube flashbulb. O.M.G! You no longer had to change the bulb after a single picture. No my friend…you could take up to 4 pictures, providing the filament in any of the bulbs wasn’t broken, before replacing the cube. Technology at its finest. 

 

6.      Music back in MY day meant having to make room for an actual piece of furniture. Sure we had portable record players and radios but if you wanted “quality” sound, a console stereo was the way to go. It could also double as the hood of a car and engine for young imaginative minds. OK…I admit I was a bit of a tomboy and had dreams of being an auto-mechanic. Go figure.

7.      See that crate of LP’s over on the right?  I have two others jam packed with disco, movie soundtracks and almost anything that hit the top 10 in the late 70’s-early 80’s. Prior to that I had a pile of 45’s (often times released singles) by the likes of Donny Osmond, The Partridge Family and Bobby Sherman. Yup…I was one “Cool Cat”.

8.      Parallel parking took muscle and brute force. No power steering or auto park back in the day. Cranking the steering wheel to get the wheels lined up was guaranteed to give you a workout. Upon leaving the parking spot the steering wheel would spin like a top at least a dozen times (or so it seemed). Heaven forbid any body parts got near the wheel of death.

9.      Thankfully we did not live near a river or creek of any sort so having to wash our clothes by pounding them against a rock was not an option. Instead we had a semi-automatic wringer washer. By semi-automatic I mean no pounding but also no spinning therefore you needed to manually feed the clothes through the “wringer” part of the washer in order to squeeze out any excess water.

10.   I am becoming my mother. Let’s leave it at that shall we. 

Off you go now. Head over to Stasha's to see what everybody else came up with.