Saturday, October 13, 2012

We are living sci-fi

OK, this post is a re-run. But it was written about a 13-year-old me, and so in honor of day #13 of the October Memoir and Backstory Challenge, we are running it again.

by Kim Van Sickler

A long-ago memory from 1976. I'm thirteen years old and think I know everything. The nation is celebrating it's bicentennial and Mom infuriates me by referring to my "boyfriend" as "my little friend" as if he's a midget. Despite the teenage angst, I think we've got it pretty good in my upper middle class home in the suburbs.
Kim in 1976 (center)
My parents installed a second phone line for me to use to talk to all of my friends. Too bad it's located in the hallway right outside their bedroom door where my voice (which has always been loud) carries throughout the entire house. For privacy, I stretch the cord and either close myself in my parent's room or my sister's room when they're empty.

Dad built a rec room in the basement where I go to veg and watch TV.  I can choose from NBC, ABC, CBS or the one VHF channel, and tune in Saturday morning for cartoons, after school until about six when all the channels switch to news, and in the evenings until eleven when they switch back to news again.  The best though, is watching Houlihan and Big Chuck host the late Friday night movies that come on after the news. Babysitting is always more fun watching these guys.
Houlihan (left) and Big Chuck host the Cleveland-area Friday night movie.

Dad's bought the entire Encyclopedia Britannica set so when I need to write  a paper for school my reference materials are right there! If I have to go to the library, I know how to use the card catalog to find what I'm looking for. My handwriting is pretty good. Teachers have always bugged my about my death grip on my pens and pencils and my writing comes out loopy and backhanded, but it's legible. Everyone can read it when I write letters, or essays, or turn in my homework.

Doing homework is always easier with tunes. I have lots of record albums I play on my turntable to set the mood I want. I've memorized many of those songs like Aerosmith's "Dream On", Queen's "You're My Best Friend", Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight", and Peter Frampton's "Baby I Love Your Way".











Life can't get any more advanced, can it?


Well, imagine how blown away I was one night at dinner when my dad, an electrical engineer working in the product planning area for General Electric, starts talking about "the future" and how technology will render everything that we hold cutting-edge to be obsolete within our lifetimes. "It's happened to me," Dad tells us. "It'll happen to you too."

No way. I actually argue that of course things had changed for him what with the advent of TV, rock-and-roll music, and the space program, but that we've arrived at full-blown civilization since then. Technology can't get any more advanced than it is in 1976.

Embarrassing how wrong I was.  My thirteen-year-old self could not comprehend computer technology, the Internet, cell phones, two hundred TV channels, CDs, You Tube, rap performed by the likes of Childish Gambino, or video games like Grand Theft Auto.

I've been reading in my Entertainment Weekly magazine about the recent Comic Con Convention in San Diego. That's where all the fantasy TV shows and movies go to plug their offerings and try and generate excitement. If Comic Con existed thirty-six years ago and produced a movie about my life today, I would have marveled at the creativity. I never would have believed such a world would come to pass. I have lived, what to me then would have been considered pure science fiction, and I've still got a long way to go.



Live long and prosper.

13 comments:

  1. My MP3 player holds about as much music as four heavy milk crates of records. We do, indeed, live in the age of miracles! At least here in the future we have avoided the widespread wearing of 1976 style plaid pants!

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    1. But disco made a comeback...so it's possible that we might still see those plaid pants again!

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  2. I hope to attend Comic Con in the near future. I'm a geek like that! :)

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    1. Looks like it's become way more mainstream over the years, but it would definitely be interesting to check out!

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  3. Not a Savvy fan. Award winners usually appeal to adults more than kids, especially when they are quirky.

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    1. Yes, I've heard that. I'm glad I'm not the only one who didn't fall head over heels over it, even though the MC's descriptive voice was impressive.

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  4. And the pace of technology has speeded up exponentially. It makes it tough to write contemporary fiction. By the time you get to the end, it's already dated. I asked an publisher about this once, & he said, "You just have to make the story so good that nobody notices."

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    1. Before I seriously started trying to write fiction I noticed that genre didn't tend to be very current in their political, clothing, and entertainment references. Of course, now I know why. Things change so fast and you don't want to date your story. I've got a cell phone texting scene in one of my books and I have wondered how much longer we're all going to be doing that. I am guessing it will be around awhile, but I've been wrong before...

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  5. Heck yes! I had a moment like this today, where I went: Holy cow, it's crazy how much technology can do for us!

    It's mind-boggling to imagine what technology will be able to do in the coming years.

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    1. Oh- I don't know if you got my response, but it looks like your address didn't record. Try it again, or else feel free to email it to me :)

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    2. Heck yes! and Holy cow! Juliana, do you really talk to yourself like that? You are so wholesome. OK, I'm resubmitting my address to you. I think some other Swaggers want to participate in the happy mail sign-up and will be contacting you as well.

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  6. Love this post, and I just want to add that way back when! how far way back when you ask? and I say way back when I was a youngster I can remember when we only had scratchy, staticy A.M. radio that faded in and out, but the one that got me was thinking ahead and wondering if I would still be around to see the year 2000, it seemed like a million years away when I was a kid and I seriously thought I'd be so old that even if I was around I wouldn't remember it!

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  7. My favorite new technologies are computer mapping programs and my GPS. I used to get lost all the time.

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