When I Was a Girl....

The other day I was having a conversation with my friend (hi, E!) about long-distance relationships and how the inventions of Skype, texting, and cell phones make things a lot easier these days. Not that they're any less challenging, but I can imagine that being able to see someone every night on the computer would help things way more than what happened when I was her age. You see, when I was 16 and had a long distance boyfriend, we communicated by letters, actual letters sent in the mail, and long distance phone calls made maybe once or twice a week (which were a treat). This was back in a time when call waiting was still this revolutionary thing and I was a rock star for having my very own phone line installed in my room. There was no email. There were no cell phones. There wasn't any Facebook chat or instant messaging or anything cool except waiting for the phone to ring or the mailman to bring a letter. I also walked to school ten miles uphill each way in the snow. Oh, wait. No, I didn't. That was my fictional grandmother. But, still, talking about "the good old days" and how different things were seems like another world. How am I this old? How has technology advanced to this degree in such a short time? By the time I'm rocking in my rocker on my porch with my grey hair, will I be driving a flying car? Transporting to a different place just by thinking about it?

It's fascinating to think about how far we've come and just how unique a world we live in. I was looking into Second Life yesterday because my true love Nick Rhodes had an article about him on there and I was completely blown away by this virtual world. It's mind boggling. What's next? How much farther will it go? Will I one day say, "Remember a world before Facebook? What did we ever do?" Oh, wait. I think I say that now. And, scene.