A Few Vague & Random Thoughts On The State Of Things

by John Dill

I think what I miss most about "the good old days" is that more things stayed the same longer back then. Now things change overnight without notice.

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We didn't have apps in the good old days, no Google search either. We had phone books and Rand McNally maps. We didn't have surprise charges on our bank accounts from apps or programs that we had forgotten that we downloaded a year ago. We had actual monthly bills in the mail back then. We paid our bills with a check, not Apple Pay. We mailed things. We dealt with companies that had phone numbers. Now we deal with companies that hide their phone numbers if they have phones at all - all communications are through the app that we haven't downloaded yet. 


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Towards the end of the good old days, passwords were finally invented, but we only needed one, usually the name of our dog or cat. The new password was for a new contraption called an ATM. We paid with cash a lot back in the good old days. Now we buy 5 dollar coffee drinks from a drive up window using Apple Pay.

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In the new era of today, we have dozens of passwords and we are constantly getting locked out of one service or the other because we can't remember our own password even though we are the ones who created it. When we finally reach someone who can help us reset our password the rules have changed. Now our password has to be "between 9 and 12 characters long, with at least two numbers and two symbols" and before the password will work they have to send us a text message with a number we have to type into the app we are trying to use to authenticate that it's actually us. Sometimes we have to check a box to prove that we are not a robot. We now have dozens of passwords that we keep stored in our computer somewhere and it requires a password to have access to our passwords.

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We used to have actual calendars, but we now have electronic calendar organizers on our cell phones that connect all of our activities up in the cloud somewhere.


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The cloud, that's another thing. The cloud? Really? If my dad came back to life today, how would I tell him his checking account was in the cloud?


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When we talk to someone who is trying to schedule us for an appointment, we have to write the information down on a piece of paper because the electronic calendar organizer thingy is an app in our cell phone which is the device we are talking on. After we write it down on a piece of paper, we hang up, and then open our electronic calendar and place our appointment in our phone. I tried to swipe my iPhone to get to my calendar app while talking to someone on the phone one day, and I apparently swiped a little too hard and hung up on the guy who I had been on hold with trying to reset my password for an hour! 


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Also in the good old days we didn't have pet medical insurance. I just thought I would mention that. Back then a virus was something our doctor diagnosed rather than an unwanted program running in the background of our computer collecting all our data including our lists of passwords. And here's another thing; keyboards were for typewriters back then. We used carbon paper to make two copies of a typed document instead of selecting the multiple print option on our printer, the same printer that always gives us an "out or ink" message after we hit print. Then when we go to purchase new print cartridges (which are more expensive than the printer itself) the cashier asks us if we are a customer loyalty club member? If we want to sign up and get points they will require that we give them our email address so they can join the parade of other email spammers that have caused us to create multiple new email accounts because our old email accounts have been rendered useless by businesses sending us scads of advertising because we signed up for loyalty points. And half of our email accounts that we have we are locked out of anyway because we can't remember our passwords.

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When our cars stopped working in the good old days the mechanic replaced the plugs, points and condenser, and that usually fixed the problem. But now he hooks up a computer diagnostics tool, which requires a password, to scan our car and hopefully diagnose the problem. In the old days when we told someone we had 9 windows open it meant that it was a hot summer day outside. Now it's an expression of being totally overwhelmed with our modern day living, or we actually do have nine windows open. Also, Spam was was a thing for dinner in the good old days. In the old days everyone ran for the phone when it rang, but now people run from the phone yelling "just let it go to messages!" Either that or people just turn the ringer off. As a reminder, there was no ringer off switch in the good old days. Nowadays there is a 90 percent chance the call is from India from a guy wanting us to extend our extended warrantee. 
Yes, you read that right. Extend our extended warrantee that we extended last year and forgot we did. Now we have an extension on the extension. But don’t worry; you can change that in the app - the one with the password you can't remember.

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In these modern times we have to program a computer to operate a pressure cooker or to sew a hem. How did sewing machines and pressure cookers get computers, or for that matter a tooth brush? Back in the good old days our newspapers were delivered to the end of our driveways, but now our newspapers are online, but nobody even reads the online version because everyone knows that all newspapers contain fake news; the real news is on TikTok.

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And also in the good old days coffee was a nickel with unlimited refills, and the only thing you could find online back then was the laundry which was hanging ON an actual LINE in the back yard. 


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I'm trying to think of some other things that we didn't have back in the good old days. I wonder if people had Attention Deficit Disorder back then.

The End