The age we grow up in

Do you ever wish for a simpler time? Sometimes I wish that progress had frozen for awhile so my children could grow up like I did. I didn’t have a cell phone in high school or junior high. When I wanted to find something out, I looked in our Encyclopedias or went to the library. To communicate with someone in writing, I sent letters. Progress has made things easier for us, but also less personal. We are now able to find out anything at anytime with our computers. Is there a such thing as a child’s innocence anymore?

I’m sure every generation parents have thought about how much different things are for their kids than it was for them. In my lifetime alone, we have stopped using cash and landlines and fireplaces that burn actual wood for the most part. We are constantly discovering shortcuts that give us chemically-processed foods and even more things our phones are capable of.

We claim to keep in touch with people because we read their Facebook posts. I wonder if my children will even be taught penmanship or if they will just learn to type instead. It is hard to shelter a child from adult things without getting rid of your TV, radio, and computer. I’m not trying to raise the most sheltered kids this side of the Pennsylvania Amish, but I would like them to be able to enjoy being kids without having the adult knowledge and worries that destroy innocence. I would like them to be able to play and learn similarly to how I did.

I hope they are able to go out to dinner without anyone being distracted by their phones. I hope they receive hand-written letters. I hope they learn to tie their shoes without watching a YouTube video. I hope they still value education instead of acting like know-it-alls because they can find out anything by Googling it. I hope they respect their elders because of the unique knowledge that comes from experience. I hope they are gracious and kind and loving.

I hope the age we grow up in doesn’t define us as much as I think it does. I hope my generation isn’t all nostalgic and out-of-touch and that my children’s generation isn’t a bunch of entitled assholes.

Fingers crossed.

Quarter in a payphone
Drying laundry on the line
Watching Sun Tea in the window
Pocket watch for tellin’ time
Seems like only yesterday I’d get a blank cassette
Record the country countdown ’cause I couldn’t buy it yet

If we drove all the way to Dallas just to buy an Easter dress
We’d take along a Rand McNally, stand in line to pay for gas
God knows that shifting gears ain’t what it used to be
I learned to drive that 55 just like a queen, three on a tree
 
If you had something to say
You’d write it on a piece of paper
Then you’d put a stamp on it
And they’d get it three days later
Boys would call the girls
And girls would turn them down
Staying married was the only way to work your problems out
 
Let’s pull the windows down
Windows with the cranks
Come on let’s take a picture
The kind you gotta shake

Hey, whatever happened to waitin’ your turn
Doing it all by hand,
‘Cause when everything is handed to you
It’s only worth as much as the time put in
It all just seemed so good the way we had it
Back before everything became automatic

~”Automatic” sung by Miranda Lambert