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This Month's Message
(from my blog)
AI & Roy Rogers
I’ve been in situations of late that really bring it home to me that as much as I want to deny my chronological age, that ain’t changing. Besides the physical reminders that I’m not as young as I think I am, there are the situational ones. A few weeks ago, my friend Selina and I decided to be adventurous, and went to the concert of someone we didn’t know. We love music, so where’s the problem? The issue was that we were 7th row center, surrounded by hordes of screaming young women, who stood the whole time, and were recording every movement of the singer. We stood for a while, then got bored and sat, then left. Not our scene. I got my next reminder when I visited my son. He’s the CEO of a manufacturing company that uses 3D printers to create parts for industry. I tried to understand what he was telling me about the technology…but I just don’t get it. And then there are his children…
I gratefully got to spend time with my eldest grandchildren, and am amazed by their command of technology. These are early elementary school age kids, who have taught themselves how to navigate and play computer games that involve other unknown people in the same game with them. At their age I was playing hide and seek. They are literally creating new worlds. I am not only baffled by it, I am a bit terrified.
It would be very easy for me to jump into, and become consumed with, the fear of the unknown – the “What Ifs”. It took some work on my part to take a step back and try to see this from a different perspective. And that is when I remembered pictures of a young me, completely absorbed in a TV show.
When I was a little girl, I would park myself in front of our black and white console TV for hours, taking in The Mickey Mouse Club, Romper Room, Captain Kangaroo, and, my personal favorite, Roy Rogers. Forget Dale Evans – I wanted to be Roy, riding off on adventures! Oh, and don’t forget the Saturday cartoons! That was good for a few hours.
To me, this was all very natural, and I never gave it any thought. I now wonder what my grandparents thought about it, having not grown up with, nor raised their children with this new-fangled technology. I am beginning to surmise they were a bit baffled by the whole thing. Or else I’m just projecting.
Perhaps it has been this way throughout history...
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