Do you remember?

On Sunday, my husband and I went to Moses Lake to a fancy restaurant to celebrate our fifty-seventh wedding anniversary.

We don’t eat at fancy restaurants very often, but this was a special occasion.

I hate to say it, but after so many years, good food is appreciated, but not necessarily found exceptional.

The special part is the fact I don’t need to cook and I enjoy having a special evening with my husband.

But what surprised me, yet perhaps shouldn’t have; I looked at a number of the younger diners and they were on their cell phones instead of interacting with each other.

I found it sad, but it’s a sign of our times. In the world of technology and social media it’s hard to think there was a simpler time when life operated at a slower pace.

It’s comforting to think about the things that gave us pleasure back in our youth. It was what would now be considered “The Olden Days.” Here is a list of some things I remember but not in any particular order.

1. Prizes in the Cracker Jacks Box were real prizes (plastic and cheap as they were) not the cardboard puzzles that are there today.

2. There was a little ceramic animal figurine in the Red Rose Tea box.

3. When you got the decodable ring ordered through Ovaltine, you found the secret message said, “Drink more Ovaltine.”

4. We ran through the sprinkler on the lawn on a hot summer day, because there weren’t many swimming pools nearby.

The lake was probably a long ways away and parents would need to take us there.

5. We drank water from the garden hose on a hot summer day.

6. Seldom were there kindergartens at school and if there were, parents had to pay for it.

7. We started school in first grade. We had big fat black or red pencils with no erasers to learn to write.

8. We wrote in a pencil tablet with penmanship lines so we knew where the tall letters went and where to write the short letters.

9. We started school with a box of 8 crayons that were big and fat and were flat on one side so they wouldn’t roll off your desk.

10. We learned to read with Dick and Jane. The teacher had a big book on an easel and we sat in a circle with the teacher in front of us.

She would point to the words while we read along with her.

11. We played Boys Chase the Girls at recess.

12. Boys played marbles and girls jumped rope to some rhyming ditties to count how many times to jump without missing.

13. Some group games we played were Red Rover, Red Rover; London Bridges Falling down; Drop the Handkerchief; Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush; Mother May I, and some others.

14. There were merry-go-rounds on the playground.

15. We listened to our favorite shows on the radio: Roy Rogers, Wild Bill Hickok, Amos and Andy, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, Sky King, and The Shadow Knows.

16. We rode in cars with no seatbelts.

17. It was great fun to ride in the back of the open bed of a pick-up.

18. We rode bikes with no helmets.

19. Roller skates clipped to our shoes and were adjusted with a skate key.

20. We pulled fresh carrots from the garden, wiped the dirt off on our clothes and ate it without washing it.

21. The phone was connected to the wall and you may have had a party line which rang your special ring so you knew when to answer your call.

It was possible to lift the receiver and listen in on someone else’s conversation.

22. The phone was a rotary dial and you learned to sweep the dial all the way around if you wanted to dial the correct number.

23. Most homes had only one bathroom shared by everyone, or perhaps a few still had an outhouse.

24. The TV was in black and white with only three to five channels which you had to get up and change with a knob if you wanted a different show. It also signed off at midnight with the National Anthem.

25. It was still accepted discipline to get a spanking for misbehaving.

The modern technology our young people grow up with today will someday seem as obsolete as the above activities are today.

We can’t stop the future, nor do we want to. It’s just that sometimes nostalgia brings back feelings of comfort that contribute to the persons we are today.

I just hope the devices used today don’t disconnect our youth from actual human connections needed to attach emotions to true relationships in their adult lives. We will see.