Oh the sweet sounds of anarchy in the morning - I don't know how I would live without them.
I have a very strict 'no electronics at school' policy. My kids know this. It has been reinforced repeatedly. I'm not sure where clarification is needed. Yet once again, we were on the 'technology at school' train. A variety of other statements were spewed out incessantly when suddenly this gem was shouted:
"It's NOT FAIR! When YOU were my age YOU got to take electronics to school!!!!"
I will admit to feeling flattered that they thought I was young enough to have actually owned something electronic when I was that age, let alone an electronic that was small and portable enough to actually take to school. What was I going to do, load up the monster sized Atari with it's stellar graphics to stare at on the playground? If I wanted to do that I would have to lug along my 10 inch black and white TV and there ain't no way that thing was leaving my room after I had to beg and plead to get it in there in the first place!
Yeah, about the closest thing to an electronic that I could have taken to school was my Mom's super cool battery operated calculator. That thing was the best! The numbers were displayed in blue, the keys clicked, and it was only slightly bigger than your hand. Oh how I loved that calculator. I would play with it for hours, turning it upside down and making words like HELLO, EGGSHELL, and BOOBIES (admit it - you did this too!), multiplying 123456789 by 987654321 just for fun, and simply running my hands across the keys to see what popped up. I would enter a number in memory, fool around with calculations for a while, and then try to remember what number I had saved. The only downside was the thing sucked the juice out of 6 AA batteries like you wouldn't believe. Really, who needed a "Little Professor" or "Speak and Spell" when you had a calculator like that to play on?
Tonight I showed my kids the kinds of electronics that were around when I was young. They thought these things were lame, and in a world of compact, flashy, and ever changing technology I can totally understand their point of view. But in my world, they were - and still are - awesome. Man, I sure do miss that calculator (and I'm only slightly bitter that my younger sister was the recipient of a Spell and Math from Santa after years and years of my lobbying hard for a Speak and Spell).
Fun Fact: My amazing husband was born 5 years before The Little Professor calculator was introduced by Texas Instruments in 1976, and a full 7 years before the Speak and Spell was introduced in 1978. Happy Birthday Mike!!!!
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