This past Tuesday,* they were all talking about Michael Jackson when Judy (the teacher) asked if they wanted to listen to some of his music.
Before Judy could turn on the CD player, a 15-ish year old girl turned to Hannah and said
"Michael Jackson had lots of records. Have you ever heard of those? They had songs on one side and then you had to pick them up and turn them over to hear the rest of the songs! My mom said that records were pretty heavy, too."
This on the heels of an article about the three days it took a 13-year-old, tech-savvy teen to figure out that there were actually two sides to the cassette tape used in the ancient Sony Walkman he was test driving.
It's a lot easier for me to see why kids Hannah's age wouldn't know about the joys of the LP and the jumble-of-tangled-tape agony that was the cassette player. After all, she's only six. But, dammit, a 13-year-old was born in the same century as I. And I'm not yet old enough to refer to the Internet as "that thing you young people use" or as being nothing more than "a series of tubes."
So when the most-sought after gadgets of my middle- and high-school years are spoken of in the tones of awe and wonder usually reserved for the discovery of an ancient civilization, yes. I feel a little old. Not quite hot-tea-and-a-parka-in-July old, but maybe a bit chase-the-snot-nosed-little-bastards-off-the-lawn-with-a-cane old.
Not really.
Well, maybe.
* For some reason I haven't been able to sign in to Blogger for a few days. My excuse du jour for the recent dearth of posts.
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