Grey Matter

LPP and I plopped down in the arm chair the other day.  The TV happened to be left on the History Channel and some clip from the war days of the 1940s was playing.  LPP sat quietly in my lap for a while, until he pointed at the TV and exclaimed, "Look Mommy!! The TV is grey!"  It took me a second to realize what he was talking about.  The footage playing on the TV was in BLACK & WHITE.  I guess he had never seen black and white film before!! What a crazy magnification of the generational gap.  Up until that moment, TV existed only in color for LPP.  I remember growing up with a black and white TV and I remember the day my Dad brought home our first color TV.  The first program I watched on our new color TV was The Jetsons!  This warm memory made me question what new things are going to crop up as LPP grows up?  Will he feel the same wonder that my generation did as we went from 8-track and LPs to cassettes and to CDs? Or from UHF bunny ear antennas to cable boxes?  Or from rotary phones to push button phones to cordless phones to cell phones? From typewriters to word processors to home computers?  From snail mail to email? From the oven to the microwave? From film reels and slides to VHS and to DVD? From Lawrence Welk to MTV? Technology has advanced so far now, and continues to do so at lightning speed, I fear that the newer generations, including LPP, won't be as easily impressed. So much is possible now that I think more is taken for granted, even expected, and sometimes a sense of entitlement seems to drip from every pore of the newer generations approaching adulthood now.  Perhaps it is fair to say that the technological advancements my generation and older generations experienced seem archaic in comparison to what is happening in the world of technology today.  But I like to also think that because technology was simpler, we were able to appreciate the advancements that much more.  I like to think that I come from a generation who understands the value of waiting, the value of process.  I like to think that it didn't take as much to impress us as it takes to impress kids today because imagination and creativity were given their fair due.  As we as a society become more and more "connected" and more advanced in the technological arena, I find myself longing for simpler days and simpler times, when a trip to the library was enough of a treat for me (okay, maybe I was just a nerd), or when dancing to records with my brother and cousin and making our own choreographed stories seemed more fun than watching someone else's in music videos.  I hope as we learn more looking forward, we don't leave the joy of simple pleasures and wonder behind.