Reimagining the Past

For all of you children born in the 70's and growing up in the 80's and 90's, who remember junior high and high school without cell phones (and I am not counting here the cellular telephones that were as big as a suitcase and sat in your car between the front seats), here is a fun mind stretching exercise. Try to re-imagine events from your junior high and high school years with today's technology.

I tried this this morning while I was waking up. I wonder what would have happened if... Just try it....

Then, imagine some of your current relationships unplugged. How does it change them? I think a plugged in relationship is a neurotic relationship. Too many answers are expected. Too much "togetherness" is experienced, even though actual "togetherness" is probably lessened. In this world of constant noise and stimulation, do we really need our relationships to be one of the things blinging at us and demanding our attention?

And let's discuss for a moment the Mars/Venus equation in light of texting. How does a man EVER get to go into his cave a woman is constantly able to text at him there? What kind of electronic boundaries should exist in relationships? What kind of texting addictions are being born out of the constant need for attention? What cancerous perversions are cropping up?

Maybe I long for the simpler days. The days like when I was in my summer after ninth grade. A boy signed my yearbook. He wrote, "It was great getting to know you and we should go out this summer." He might have been being nice. I liked him. Maybe he would have asked me out. In the old days, it was more daunting to ask a girl out since you had to call her house and maybe catch a parent on the line. He never called.

But, after a little while, I forgot about him. I bumped into him once that summer. We had an awkward, blushy hello outside the movie theater. There was no personal phone number I could give him on which to reach me. I didn't have to feel the pain of no texting from him, or be on Facebook to see all the fun he had that summer with out me. I could continue to have my life. That was the beautiful thing about life before being plugged into everybody else. We lived our own lives. We knew what we wanted. We didn't have to text ten people to figure out what we wanted to do, we just decided what we were doing.