The Good Old Days??

Those of us who have reached a certain age, remember how things used to be….

I know people who are quite incensed that things have changed so much since they were young.  They can sit and recall, for hours on end, all the wonderful things that they remember from the good old days….  And I always think of the quote:   ”The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is…….” (Marcel Pagnol)

Having just finished my journal of the Christmas season, I can tell you that the good old days weren’t all that good…..

I remember a project I had to do for an advanced placement class I took in my senior year of high school.  We had to answer “millions” of questions about things that were going on in the world at that time.  Our answers had to be scholarly, as in including references….

I know that my report was 140 type-written pages long.  I also remember staying up all night, the night before it was due, to complete it.  Oh, I had been working on it all semester, believe me.  I was on a first name basis with all the librarians at the Podunk Public Library.  I was there almost every day, it seems.

And I typed my report on an “portable”  typewriter.   Since the questions had to be answered in order, I would leave room for an answer I didn’t have yet and go on to the next question.  In the end, I had answered all the questions but not always with references (“my dad” didn’t count as a reference). 

The reason I bring up that old memory is because I used my typewriter to journal the month of December, 2011, in my December Daily scrapbook.   Thinking back to that 140-page tome I wrote, I am amazed…….still.

You see, even on the soft setting, the keys are still hard to press.  There is no genie living in the typewriter to automatically capitalize the first word in a sentence.  Nor can I figure out how to “cut and paste” something that is in the wrong place…….other than with scissors and glue.

I had forgotten that my typewriter didn’t have an exclamation point.  You had to make your own….  And the numbers don’t include a “1”……I had to use the small “l” instead.  That is, when I didn’t forget and use the “i”…..which looks funny next to a real number….

And mistakes?  Easy.  Start over on another piece of paper…..

I am thrilled that I have a documentary of our Christmas season.  I had fun making it, too.  And using the “old” typewriter is quite the “in” thing to do, in the scrapbooking world, at least.  Too bad there are so many letters typed over because I didn’t want to use the White Out…..

And I think, actually, THESE are the good old days……