Kids These Days

I've been thinking a lot, recently, about how different the live of kids are now-a-days.  There are things that were so common place in my childhood, that youths today have no concept of.  There's the obvious things, like they'll never know what it's like to call collect (unless they end up in prison, I suppose), and I can't imagine that if a 9th grader in today's world were to do a report on Australia, they would have to spend an evening calling Star 101.5 requesting "Land Down Under" by Men at Work.  Then sit by their combo radio-tape-CD player, with a blank cassette ready to record as much of the song as they could.  Or if your radio didn't have a tape recorder, a TalkBoy would get the job done.

Then of course there's the flip side to that.  Kids today's reality is so different from mine.  For example, I was in my 20s when my dear friend Camilla taught me how to pronounce quinoa.

This picture was probably taken shortly after I learned how to say quinoa.

Also, do you think a modern child would remember the first time they had a bottled water?  Because I do!  It was November 25, 1993, and it was Naya brand.

I remember it because, it was Thanksgiving and my parents surprised me and my younger sisters with a trip to Disneyland ( the older kids got to go to Disneyland too, but it wasn't a surprise for them), and my mom bought some for us to take on the plane. I had seen bottled water on the hit television show "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", and a schoolmate of mine once had bottled water.  But she was an only child, so I assumed that since I had siblings I would never have such a nicety.  Then it happened.  I got a bottle of water all my own.  And I loved it.  I really did.  I saved the bottle for a long time after the trip.  I once brought some chocolate milk, in it, to school, and the other kids made fun of me.  However, as my mother pointed out, they were probably just jealous.... Bet they thought they'd never have a bottled water bottle.