Okay Google. Where is the closest Starbucks to my location? Okay Google. Is there other Cheddar’s Restaurants between Kansas City and Branson? Okay Google. How many grams of sugar are in chocolate milk vs. skim milk? Okay Google. How much beer does the average American consume each year? Okay Google. How many albums does the band Skillet have? Okay Google. When does Jen Ledger’s album release happen?
Road tripping with the Gavin’s often looks like an eternal Google commercial. We live in a world where we rely heavily on the internet to answer our questions. Lily will often realize this and question how we found out information without having cell phones or even the internet. When I tell her that we were just content not knowing, she can’t even understand what I am saying. But how did you find Starbucks? We didn’t have Starbucks. How did you know where to eat lunch when you were traveling? We would just drive until we found a restaurant that looked good and then we would stop the car.
Lily asked last night how we would find out movie times. I told her it was either printed in the newspaper or we would call the theater and ask the times. She asked how we called them if we didn’t have a cell phone. I told her that we had home phones that were attached to the wall by a cord and we would use the rotary dial and call the theater. She asked me what a rotary dial was.
Lily just finished writing a paper at school. I asked her what books she used as references. She had no idea what I was talking about. References? Do you mean websites? Zach’s favorite activity at school involves a scavenger hunt list where he takes a picture on an ipad of the found item. Zach wonders why ipad use without internet access is so frustrating. He wants to play on the ipad, he is holding the ipad, mom unlocked the screen, why doesn’t it work? When we don’t have access to wireless internet, Lily can’t understand why only certain books on the kindle are downloadable. I typed it in mom, why can’t I download it and read it now?
When I was Lily’s age (11) and I got home from school each day, I would have a snack and watch Little House on the Prairie. She asked if we had the whole dvd set. I told her no, it was actually on tv every afternoon. What? You watched a show on tv after school? Isn’t that when all the afternoon talk shows are on? Just after we finished talking about Little House on the Prairie, we passed an Amish horse drawn buggy. We talked about not having electricity or phones or tv or internet. Lily was baffled. We tried to find the Amish Trading post somewhere in Osceola, MO. It apparently was too off the beaten path and we never found it. We only found the bus depot. Lily was fascinated that they live the way that they do, and was flustered that we couldn’t find the trading post. “It must be well hidden. They didn’t want to sell us anything anyway because they need it for themselves.”
Daily, I am able to point out the differences between when I was kid and now. Occasionally I will share stories with Lily about when Grandma Jo and Great Grandma Charlotte were little girls and what life was like for them. I once told her about when my mom, Jo Cook, was a little girl and televisions became available for their home. She said that because they lived near a tv station in St. Paul, MN, they were able to get one or two stations. She remembers feeling like she was popular but then realized that the kids on the street came over after school mostly to watch tv and enjoy her mom’s yummy snacks. She shared that she remembered spending hours in the library working on papers in high school and that secretarial school was a challenge because if she didn’t arrive early enough each day, she would get one of the older manual typewriters and the keys would stick. Lily didn’t know what I was talking about when I told her that I even had a typewriter as a child and that when computers were brought into my elementary school, we only used them to actually learn how to type and to play Oregon Trail during free time. She asked me...what is Oregon Trail?
Daily I am grateful for technological advancements. For electricity, indoor plumbing, televisions, vcr’s, dvd players, computers, laptops, ipads, cell phones, the internet, and absolutely for Google. Because without google, I wouldn’t be able to research the history of the Guernsey cow. Or find out when The Greatest Showman will be released on DVD. And I surely wouldn’t be able ever know what direction to turn. My use of google maps makes me look like I am adulting at a very high level. Google. I salute you.
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