Growing Up in the Dark Ages

Allow me to apologize for the long delay between blogs. During football season, I was doing a bunch of freelance newspaper writing, and I decided that getting paid to write about football games was slightly more important than doing a blog for my own kicks and giggles.
Then we went to Thailand for two weeks for Christmas, which was AWESOME. It was me, Missy and Addison, my brother, my mom, my sister, her husband and three kids. Her kids are ages four, two-and-a-half, and nine months. Addie turned three while we were over there. They loved playing together and of course it was a great and rare opportunity for the Franklins to all be together in a beautiful country. I posted some pics on Facebook.
Anyway, what I was going to write about was the fact that for two weeks, we had virtually no access to those staples of American culture, phones and internet. Our phones didn't work at all, and we didn't bring our laptop. There was a community computer at the resort we stayed at, but I only got on it twice in two weeks.
It was really nice to be free from those things, they can definitely bind you and take over your life if you let them. I know I spend way too much time on them.
While we were in Thailand, I got to thinking about how much different our lives were before those things. Many of you may not be old enough to have experienced this, but when I was in high school (graduated in 1998) I didn't have a cell phone and our computer was so slow that all I'd ever do on it was check my e-mail.
Growing up, if I wanted to call a friend I had to pick up the house phone and call their house. Usually a mom or dad would answer and then I had to ask for my friend. If they were there and available, we could talk.
Many times, just picking up the phone in our house was a chore. Between my parents and little brother and sister, it was in use quite a bit. And since our internet was dial-up, if anyone was on the computer it tied up the phone line as well. Picking up the phone when someone was on the computer was a big no-no, as it booted them off the internet and they had to start all over (not a swift process back then).
Texting would have really come in handy for me back then, since I was a typical teenage dude who didn't really want to chat up his friends but just wanted to see if I could get a game of basketball or Super Nintendo going.
Overall, I'd say the advances in technology are a very good thing. Many a fight in the Franklin household would have been avoided by all of us having our own phone line. Also, it seems odd now that when I was in high school, I could go out with my friends and my parents would have basically no way to get ahold of me. I ran with some really good guys so we were never drinking or doing anything too stupid, but not everyone is that lucky.
Of course, everything must be done in moderation, and there's definitely an epidemic in society now with kids who can't carry on a real conversation and spend all their time on their phones and laptops. It's something we'll be handling with Addison not too long from now. (I know I sound like an old man).
It's really funny to think back to the days of having to wait for my sister to get off the phone so I could call someone. Or when I was convinced my girlfriend was calling but my brother probably wouldn't even switch over on the call waiting. Or of waiting literally several minutes for a web page to load, and this was before the days of Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. I don't even remember what web pages I ever went to, other than AOL to check my e-mail and ESPN to get sports scores.
I'd be ripping my hair out if I had to do those things now. If a web page takes 10 seconds to load, I'm muttering under my breath.
Anyway, I found a hilarious video on YouTube that sums it up pretty good.