As I get older, I find myself prefacing far too many statements and anecdotes with phrases like, “when I was a kid,” or “back in my day.” So to show I’m still up to date, I’ve come up with an acronym that should soon be sweeping Twitter, Facebook, and every nook and cranny of social media. It’s ITOD, as in “In the old days.”
It’s easy to use and appropriate for many occasions. For example:
- ITOD airports were filled with pay phones and flight-insurance kiosks. Today they’re filled with food courts and TSA outposts.
- ITOD families had station wagons. Today they have crossovers or SUVs, which come in small, mid-sized, and large, or possibly a multi-purpose vehicle, minivan, or van.
- ITOD all you had to take to class in college was a notebook and a pen or pencil. Today students need a backpack to carry their textbooks, notebook, laptop computer, smart phone/camera, water bottle, and iPod.
- ITOD only bikers, veteran seaman and Marines, and Holocaust surrvivors had tatoos, and only female ears were pierced. Today, tatoos and piercings are everywhere.
- ITOD people took film to be developed, often to little yellow Fotomat shacks in the middle of mall parking lots. Then they actually took home photographs to pass around and show freinds and family. Today, more poeple take more photos, but those images rarely make it off the hard drive. And friends and family get to see vactions and weddings and brithdays while crowded around cellphones and laptops.
- ITOD every manned rocket launch, space walk, and other space feats (Skylab, internatioanl space hook-ups) got major poress. Today they are sidenotes.
- ITOD everyone accepted the fact we would eventually convert to metric units. Today, that’s a pipedream.
- ITOD few TVs had remote controls and a major problem with older sets was a rolling picture, i.e., a vertical hold that wouldn’t hold. Today’s TVs don’t even have a way to adjust vertical or horizontal hold.
You get the idea.
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