I was thinking today about how the world has changed and while most of the time I am totally awed by the technology available to us, every once in a while I long for the days of old. I remember when I was a young girl I would write letters to my cousin Peggy in South Dakota. Getting a letter in the mail was a special treat. Whenever we would go on vacation, my favorite thing to do was to get postcards and mail them along the way to my friends back home. When someone died, you sent a sympathy card. When someone had a birthday, you went to the store and looked for just the right card.
Now we email and text and blog and facebook our thoughts and wishes. Even funeral homes have online guest books where you can leave messages for the bereaved. Gone are the days of looking through encyclopedias to find information. Now we just google it.
Texting and online chats have replaced actual conversations. Home telephones and answering machines are becoming more and more obsolete as people change to cell phones and voice mail.
The problem is that when you text, or email, you cannot detect the emotions behind the words at times. When you talk on the phone, you can hear the inflections and emotions in a person’s voice. Emoticons just don’t work that well sometimes. LOL has replaced actually hearing a persons laughter as you tell them face to face a funny story. No matter how many exclamation points you put or how many xoxoxox’s you put in a text or an email, the other person can’t hear the sincerity, or the enthusiasm in your voice.
Remember the days when you would call someone and they weren’t home you would just call back later. Now if you call and someone doesn’t answer you think something is wrong because EVERYONE has their cell phone with them all the time. At least everyone I know. I can’t think of the last time I didn’t have it actually on my person other than the hour I am at Church in the actual service. The first thing I do when I get back to the choir room to take off my robe is to check my phone to see if I’ve missed any calls or texts. One day last week I sent Joe and email and he didn’t respond as quickly as he normally does. I tried calling and his phone would automatically go to voice mail. I became concerned after not being able to reach him. All sorts of scenarios played out in my head. When I finally did get a hold of him he was frustrated because his cell phone and his computer had both stopped working.
If you think the world hasn’t changed, try finding a payphone that actually works!
If the computer is down for even a few minutes at work everyone panics because we have become so dependent on it. We complain about how slow it is when we are trying to look something up on it when in reality it may take us seconds compared to what it used to be like before computers. I get more and more faxed or emailed invoices and fewer and fewer bills in the mail at work.
One day I was at a Wendy’s and their computerized cash registers were down. They were taking orders the old fashioned way, on a piece of paper. They were adding up the totals on a calculator. The problem came in when the young workers couldn’t figure out how to make change without the computerized cash register telling them exactly how much change to give. The line kept getting longer as the 2 young people at the front struggled to know how much change to give someone. Finally, in frustration the manager told them to round the amount down to the nearest dollar. I found that funny….and disturbing.
Yesterday, I got an electronic thank you note for a wedding gift I had given a young couple. The virtual card was ok. When I opened it , the typed script thanking me for the wedding gift was pretty similar to what someone would actually write in a real card. Then I noticed the address line. Not only did I get this card but 17 other people received the same card, same sentiments all at the touch of an enter key. Took the personal out of it somehow. Maybe I should have sent a virtual gift.
Looking through boxes several weeks ago I came across a box of letters I had saved from friends and relatives and boyfriends and some love letters mixed in. What fun it was to go back and read the letters. Now I save the emails people send me in a folder in my email account. With the touch of a mouse, I can open the folder and read the emails. There is no handwriting to decipher, no mis-spellings (thanks to spell check),no smudges from tears, no o’s with smiley faces in them, no i’s dotted with a heart instead of a dot. The emails have content, but no personality. I supposed I could print them out and fold them up and store them in a box to find years later and re-read. Just doesn’t seem worth it. Not when with the click of a mouse I can read them while sitting at my desk.
Instead of diaries and journals, I have a blogsite. Instead of photo albums, I have photo discs. Instead of love letters, I have electronic mailed saved in folder. I am grateful for facebook and the birthday reminders. It was really wonderful to get birthday wishes via facebook from so many people. It was also nice to get some birthday wishes the old fashioned way…in person, in the form of a card I can actually save and even a few gifts …and not virtual ones either.
I think that I’ll go to the Hallmark store this weekend and buy some cards for upcoming birthdays. I think I’ll write a real letter to a friend of mine that doesn’t have facebook, or a cell phone thus no texting . My handwriting may be illegible, the news may be old news by the time it travels by snail mail. It’ll require a stamp and a walk to the mailbox to put the flag up. But hopefully, not long after I send it, I’ll come home one day after work and check my mail and there in the midst of bills and flyers and junk mail there’ll be a return letter addressed to me with an old fashioned P.S. at the end of it and a reminder to write again soon.
And for a few minutes I can ignore the cell phone, not log in to facebook or email and sit and read a letter the old fashioned way. What a treat that will be.
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