run out of womb

... learning how to be a mum from scratch

Wednesday 17 February 2016

Encarta 95.. and other childhood joys my baby will never know


Ever since Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World came on the car radio and stopped my baby's roar in its tracks, I've had it on a lot. And one of the lyrics sticks in my mind: "I hear babies cry, and I watched them grow / They'll learn much more than I'll ever know."
It's true in lots of ways - but I started thinking of all the things Noughties-born babies will also miss out. Not just the way that 'gaming' meant breaking out Dreamphone (best game ever), but...

* The fact that researching homework used to involve looking up the thing in the index book of this set...



before you had to then find the one-of-20 books it directed you to, before eventually learning what you needed. When things got really high-tech, remember when you could 'quickly' insert this CD Rom to do the same...?
                                                         

I fuddy-duddy-ly feel sure that the resultant knowledge stuck longer than when homework questions nowadays are solved with a quick Google.


* Next piece of nostalgia? That my baby will never know the crazed excitement of taking your film canister (with 24 photos... 48 if you REALLY splurged) of holiday photos into Boots. Then waiting a week (again, 24 hours if you really splashed out) for access to the snaps of you and that boy/that pool/that ice cream.. Then lovingly sticking them in photo albums rather than carrying out 1,452 pics of our toes in some sand from four days in Ibiza via the phone in our back pocket.
        

* And my baby won't have the joy of a 10p Freddo or 1p cola bottle... Or a 10p pack of (disgusting) Space Invaders or almost-as-cheap Panda pop. Poor Freddo will probably cost £10 when today's babes are old enough to get pocket money.

                                                     

* Now, the age that my baby will end up getting his first mobile (phone, he's already got a cot-dangler) frankly scares me. But I'll also be sad that he'll never know the random pleasure of knowing a friend is a special one because you've called them so much that you've memorised their phone number. The future death of the landline means my baby will probably never have the joy of endlessly bugging his best buddy's parents ("Hi. It's me again. Is XX there again? I forgot to say something when I hung up, just now.")

* And my baby will never watch a film until its tape is scratchy - not just because that video tape won't exist, but because the future version of Netflix will mean he can access so many films that they'll be no need to watch Cool Runnings 16 times one summer holiday, as I once did definitely didn't do. 


* My baby probably also won't know the rigidity of arranging to meet a friend somewhere, and actually turning up in that place, bang on time, because he will probably always have a phone to send a text, or some future method of instant communication, saying, 'Running late, sorry...'
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2 comments

  1. It's all so true!
    I remember Encarta so well and thinking it was amazing that it had so much information.

    Our children will never have the agonising wait while the dial up tone on the Internet connected and it took forever some days! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's all so true!
    I remember Encarta so well and thinking it was amazing that it had so much information.

    Our children will never have the agonising wait while the dial up tone on the Internet connected and it took forever some days! :)

    ReplyDelete

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