Thursday, December 30, 2010

Media Savvy

I am not that old.

Sure, I remember 8 tracks in my Aunt Sandy's green Cutlass (sitting in the front with no seat belt--eek!). I also recall how thrilled I was to receive a record player for Christmas (on which I played Elton John, Chicago, Whitney Houston, Wham, Prince and Michael Jackson albums.) I fondly recall my first Walkman, cassette tapes and our family's first microwave oven.

I vividly remember the first car phone I ever saw (a bright red one in my great aunt's friend's Cadillac). I can retrace the evolution of emergency 'bag phones' to the hand helds the size of a brick with antennas protruding from them.

One Summer in elementary school I took computer enrichment classes at a local community college where we learned to use RUN commands to make pictures out of Xs. Computer paper back then was green and white striped with cut out holes on the sides. I remember being completely baffled by the Internet and getting my first e-mail address in college.

Maybe I am older than I think.

It blows me away to think that my children will never remember life without ipods, blogs, laptops, iphones, dvrs and facebook. It stuns me that at 6 they are already starting to pick up on the lingo.

Last week R asked me a question. When I told him I didn't know the answer he said, "Well, could you please google it up on your phone for me?"

Yesterday, P & K decided they wanted to sell some of their extra guitar picks. (They received a jumbo bag of 50 with the guitar their grandparents gave them for Christmas.)

I overheard P counting them and then telling K, "I think we should keep 6 and sell the rest."
These are clearly the offspring of a Mama that has never met a consignment sale she didn't like. ;-)

As they set about making signs and setting up a 'guitar pick stand' at the end of our driveway, I reminded them that it was 26 degrees outside and many of our neighbors were out of town for the holiday. Completely undeterred, P replied, "Well, why don't you just tell people on facebook that we are having a sale today."

K chimed in, "Yeah, and you can send a text message to people from your phone."

My little entrepreneurs are media savvy at six years old. It is clearly a different day and age!

7 comments:

Liz said...

That is hilarious! I love it!

Jani said...

My 11 year old sets up all of our electronics for us. They got an XBox for Christmas and he had it set up by noon...and also connected to the internet! (and all of our electronic stuff is in "public" places so we can see whatever it is they are doing!!)

What is crazier? To think they will some day be 40 and saying, "I remember the OLD days of internet and those cell phone things people used!" It will be amazing to see what happens in the next 40 years!!

elizabeth said...

My oldest daughter just did a 4H project on this very topic (evolution of communication..but mainly communication via phones and computers) I too remember the computer class I had in high school where we had to enter in all sorts of commands that I could never remember! (Thank you windows!) I had the bag phone all throughout college and M took it as her visual for the project! What is even crazier is that it seems like the internet has been around a long time but it wasn't really introduced to public until 1991(ish)...THAT is crazy! I didn't use the internet in my college career unless I went to the university library to do it. It is truly amazing how different our children's life will be. (Just think..they won't know life without twist off top water bottles either. Imagine actually getting your water from the kitchen faucet)

Sarah M said...

A couple of weeks ago we were talking about where Santa lives with my 8 and 6-year-olds. The 8-year-old (clearly not very well versed in the Santa lore) piped up that he lived in Heaven. The 6-year-old corrected him, "Santa lives in the North Pole. He's not God."

From that a very theological discussion about where Heaven is ensued. After each child stated their opinion they wanted some facts. My husband was on the computer at the time and when the kids decided they needed more info, my 8-year-old says, "Don't worry, Daddy will Google it for us."

C R said...

Haha. My six year old twins had a popcorn sale in our driveway yesterday. (We live on 10 acres and have neighbors, but we can't even see their houses.). Luckily, my uncle is living in our guest house/garage apartment now and he saw them and bought all they hadn't eaten. Fun times.

Harvey Lee Whitmire said...

I enjoy reading your blog. We have a set of triplets here in Harper, Mississippi. They are know as the Truelove Triplets. Ricky Ronald, Dicky Donald, and Micky Mondale Truelove. They are now teenagers and are a heap of trouble. Yours shore do look sweet.
Harvey Lee Whitmire

La Familia Garcia said...

If we lived closer, we'd definately stop by! I'll remember this for our next lemonade stand, or "flowers" for sale!