As someone who is deeply into researching ancestry, I have found myself wondering what my ancestors would think of the person I am today: my life, my family and my accomplishments. Then I reach for a bottle of water, purchased for between $1 to $3 each.
I cannot help but think they are aghast. “Who on earth will pay money for bottles of water?!”
This would likely be followed by a firm belief that I am an idiot and all their hard work to bring our family to the new world was for naught. That is fair.
I grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s and all I can think is that we must have been the most dehydrated people on the planet. The entire country was dry. Not as in nonalcoholic. Heaven’s no. In my memory, they drank beer like fish. Assuming fish drink? I don’t quite know where that saying came from. No, we just didn’t drink water. Ever.
On any given day, I had whatever milk was left in the bottom of my cereal bowl after I finished my Cap’n Crunch. Lunch was one of those little milk cartons of chocolate milk. What was that, maybe six ounces?
Afternoon recess might have included a stop by the communal water fountain in the hall. You didn’t get much to drink when you had thirty kids jostling you. “Hurry UP.”
After school, you might have a Popsicle, or not. Then you had milk or water or if you had a really cool parent (or a babysitter) a Pepsi. There was probably less than 20 ounces of liquid all day long and no more than a sip of it was actual water.
Adults never drank water. They drank coffee, iced tea, maybe milk or soda, and parties were alcohol, soda and party punch. Even on track and field days, we didn’t have bottled water. I remember those huge coolers from McDonald’s filled with a sugary orange drink. No one had water bottles at school.
I didn’t spend a lot of time in fancy restaurants, but from my few childhood forays to the Brown Derby (swanky!) I don’t recall water with lemon being served as a matter of course the moment we sat down. I don’t recall anyone willingly drinking water beyond a little four ounce paper cup of water with some pills.
We just didn’t know then what we know now. We still thought we were so smart.
Of course, all of us of “a certain age” had at least one teacher who warned us against relying on calculators and wanted us to work everything out by hand if we could.
“You’re not always just going to have a calculator in your pocket.”
They got that one very wrong. Not only does my mobile phone have a calculator built right in, but Siri, or Google, will simply TELL me that answer. I’m sure I am dumber for it, but it sure is handy.
I can remember watching Star Trek reruns and thinking how cool it would be to have communicators, tablet computers, translators and video calls. Today most of us have a device that does all of these things right in our purse or pocket.
Of course, now, if I need to figure out the square footage of wood floor finish, for example, I pull out my phone to calculate. Then I also return a text, check my email, look at the headlines and browse Pinterest for more ideas. Thus, I managed to make a task that should have lasted mere seconds take a good 20 minutes or more. That’s if I even remember why I pulled out the phone in the first place.
I have said for YEARS and continue to belabor the fact that there are no flying cars — yet. I mean, the self-driving cars seem pretty out there, and kind of iffy. I suppose it makes perfect sense that we aren’t willing to go airborne yet.
Going back even further, I recall my grandparents pointing out that in the old Dick Tracy comics, the police would talk to each other on a “two-way wrist radio.” They thought the way we talked on phones held in our hands seemed reminiscent of that. Now we have smart watches for that. They can also monitor diet, exercise and weight, so it’s a little like having your own mini-patrol partner on your wrist at all times. It can also remind us to drink more water, so we’ve really come full circle on that.
