Acting like its 1995 19 years later

I really would love to have one day where we could act like it’s 1995.

I really don’t think it would be to much to ask, for that at least one day a week or possibly month, we could put our phones down, stay of the computers and actually have conversations with each other.

Every time I go somewhere like a restaurant, most of the people sitting together just sit there and play on their phones. A lot of times I think they are just texting each other, which really makes me want to scream.

Let’s tell each other how we’re doing without a fancy emoji or Facebook messenger sticker, or a text with so many different acronyms that it takes more time to actually decipher what is going on than it would to just read it.

The other day I received a message that said, “IKR” and it spent me a good five minutes to realize I’m way to old to speak that type of lingo. My initial thoughts were, why did you kick Roger? Or did they kill Roger? Just seems like it’s kind of getting out of hand. I know, right?

I’ll be the first to admit that I spend way to much time on my phone, and for the most part I’m not really sure why.

If you were to go through my web history it usually include some of the stupidest searches possible. I’m not sure why I would need to know right away how to make mozzarella cheese at home, but I guess I did. Turns out it was way harder than I expected.

I often times will just pick up my phone just for the sake of having in it my hand. How stupid is that? But, yet I do.

It’s crazy to admit, but often times when I’m on my phone, my cat Peaches will come over and try to knock it out of my hand in an effort to say, put it down and spend some time with me.

We have just become a society that seeks instant knowledge available at our fingertips that we forgot what it was like to actually go out and find it.

Remember encyclopedias? Those gave me hours of enjoyment, and while it sometimes didn’t give me everything I was looking for, I learned so much.

I couldn’t not imagine what it would have been like to be in grade school and have the internet at my finger tips. I don’t think I would have learned anything on my own. I would have just used Google as my best friend.

My son often looks at me like I’m a 148 years old when I tell him about the days before smart phones and the internet. I tell stories of children spending the day outside, coming in the house looking like Pigpen (I’m sure he had to Google to figure out what I was talking about), and going to the library to do research out of books.

Luckily he seems to do some of those things, but sometimes if you put him in front of a video game it takes a riot squad to get his attention.

I really got upset about what our society has become is when I was on the airplane a few weeks ago and they asked if someone could change seats so a mom could sit with her son. I looked around and everybody just ignored it and played on their phones, tablets, and laptops completely incoherent that it wouldn’t hurt to put the technology down for a little bit and help a fellow human being out.

So I think what I’m going to do one of these weekends is to just conventionally leave my phone at the office and enjoy a weekend of actual human interaction.

I highly recommend that others do as well.

Maybe I’ll see you and we can talk. It would be glorious.

Or maybe I’ll get a flip phone that only calls out. That would be a blast from the past I would enjoy.