Jun 28, 2021

5 Things Kids Today Won’t Understand

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by GRACE K!DS

Raising kids today is a struggle. They just don’t understand what we had to go through as kids. With things like dial-up internet, phones that plugged INTO the wall, and needing to wait for things it is a wonder we survived our ’80s and ’90s childhoods.

But here we are on the other side of that Rockin it! The new challenge is telling jokes and making references our kids just simply don’t understand. There are 5 things kids today just don’t get but you definitely will.

Dial-Up Internet

Just close your eyes and think back to that screeching noise that held your future of uncertainty.

Dial-up internet!  Ahhhhhh, do you have chills running down your spine just thinking about it?

Most humans born after 1999 will have no idea what we are talking about.  Using the internet at home meant you were sitting in front of a huge computer modem (larger than our tv’s today) and you would sit and sit and sit, crossing your fingers and praying that after a good 10 minutes of noise you would be able to connect to the SLOWEST internet known to man.

Just as you get connected and you are going to send a message through AOL or play a very long game of Oregon Trail, your sister starts to pester you to log off, because she wants to use the phone.

That’s right kids, you could not use the phone and the internet at the same time. Mind blown right?

Home Phones and ONLY Home Phones

Speaking of using the phone. I’m not talking about that 1/2” thick computer in your back pocket.

Ohhhhh no, I’m talking about the clear corded phone with all the neon-colored wires and light-up number pad.  Most of us no longer have a landline phone for our kids to use, our kids are growing up in cellphone-only homes.

But I remember waiting, for what felt like centuries, for the cute boy at school to call or waiting for the call from friends to be invited to hang out.  Oh, man the anxiety.

You never wanted to go too far from the room where the phone was hanging because if you did and you didn’t have an answering machine (do our kids even know what those are?) you had no way to know if someone called or who it was.

This made relationships a little more rocky because when you missed the call you would go all night thinking about how your friends never invited you or that boy wasn’t really into you. Which made school the next day SUPER awkward because then you would try to dodge that person and then they didn’t know why and, well you know, the snowball continued to grow.

But if that person you were waiting for did call, then you were stuck to the room where the phone was to talk in front of your whole family.

I remember stretching the cord of our telephone so far trying to get privacy that the cord would pop out of the phone. I even asked for a longer phone cord for my birthday one time.  When the cord was finally stretched long enough for a little privacy you had to always be aware of hearing a faint click. If you did hear that click then you knew your sister was trying to eavesdrop on your conversation.

Blockbuster

Our kids today will never know the ultimate letdown of waiting for your parents to take you to Blockbuster to rent a VHS movie, searching the aisles, finally finding the movie you have been waiting for all week, picking up the case, and it’s EMPTY.  After coming up empty, you search for a new movie and settle for something you have never heard of.

No Music Streaming Services

Today we have so many sources to listen to any type of music our hearts desire. Youtube, Spotify, amazon music, etc. And with just the touch of the screen, we are listening to exactly want we wanted at the moment we wanted it.

Remember when music on a cassette tape was like a delicacy.  When a static radio station is what we had to record our favorite songs from and almost every song had the first couple seconds cut off because you didn’t know what song was going to play.

Once you figured out the art of recording music to the cassette tape, then we got really creative and would make mixed tapes for our friends. Handing that mixed tape over with a VERY creative title, to your friend was like a moment of arrival.

Let’s move on a few years from cassette tapes right on up to the Walkman.  If you said to your kid “don’t touch the radio it might skip” they would look at you like you just spoke a foreign language to them.

Walkmans were the coolest thing since sliced bread until you dropped it or bumped it too hard. After that, your CD was scratched and your music would skip on that second every time.  But being able to ‘skip’ to the next song without having to hold down the fast forward button and guess when the next song started and press play.

CD players were huge time savers.

Pet Rocks

And let’s not forget pet rocks.

Whoever picked up those little rocks in their backyard and painted googly eyes on them and decided to sell them individually or in ‘rock concerts’ was genius.

I asked my mom for a new pet rock every time we ran across them. Although, those tiny pebbles were lost in the car before we even made it home.

My mom could have easily made me a million pet rocks at home for next to nothing but she continued to dish out the dollars to build my collection. There are a lot of toys and gadgets that my children will ask me for and I tell them “I am not spending money on that silly thing”.

If they were to ask me for a tiny pebble rock with painted googly eyes on it, I would probably laugh and I would probably buy her one too (then she would have to make the rest herself lol).

I never imagined a silly-eyed rock would have been so popular or nostalgic. They are even coming back!

Waiting

All in all, our kids live in an instant gratification kind of world and will never understand the meaning of a slow-paced, patience-testing life.  We have earned that badge as a kid growing up in the ’80s and ’90s.

Looking for a community or someone to grab coffee with who is in a similar life season? We’d love to connect with you and get to know you better! Below you will find a few people that can’t wait to meet you, shoot us an email so we can make a plan!

Tyler OJ Campus

Teresa Ator: teresaa@gcc.org

Bethanie Tayler: bethaniet@gcc.org

Tyler UB Campus

Max Heller: maxh@gcc.org

Chrisleigh Heller: chrisleighh@gcc.org

Lindale Campus

Molly Pontius: mollyp@gcc.org

Debra Kirby: debra@gcc.org