The "Oh, For The Good Old Days" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Carol and I are walking through neighboring Overlook Park for our morning walk.  Early Saturday and there are very few walkers on the paths that wind through the park.  As we approach the small play area that has rock formations, climbing areas, swings and jungle gyms, I hear young children talking loudly.  When we finally see them I realized they are yelling for their father to look at them crawling on the climbing wall while he sits nearby on a bench, looking at his phone.  

It took us only a minute or two to pass by them, but at no time did he remove his face from his phone to look at his children.  It could have been the perfect time for him to share some quality time with his children, but he blew it!  All because he had to check a message or send a text that more than likely had little impact on his life, when he could have been spending time with his children.  I know I grew up in a different era than the parents of today and they may have more important things to attend to than I ever did, but I can't understand why parents can't put down the technology of their generation to parent their children.  Even though we were out of sight of the situation, we could still hear the children yelling for their dad to watch them so something. It will come back to haunt that man sometime in the future, just wait and see.  Don't get me wrong, technology is a great thing and has made our lives easier, but when you go on vacation with the entire family, as we recently did for a week at the Jersey Shore, and while sitting in the living room with everyone and you and your wife are the only two who do not have their noses buried in their phones, something is amiss.  What can be that important that you can't spend some time talking with one another.  I even found that my granddaughter was texting a message across the room to her friend whom she brought on vacation with her and was sitting 10 feet away from her.  At times when we visit with family, Carol and I feel as if we are the only two people in the room who are part of the conversation.  I often wonder what would happen if the Internet went offline for one day or if all cell towers fell to earth for a day.  Would the world come to an end?  Would the stock market crash?  Oh, for the good old days when life was more simple and kids actually spent time outside playing and riding bikes instead of holding a device in their hand and trying to kill the entire nation with automatic weapons.  Oh, for the good old days when young teenagers would listen to music that you could actually understand the words they were saying and that had more than one or even two pitches to the song.  Oh, for the good old days when your friends could enjoy playing a board game or actually discussing something without having to check their phone every few seconds.  Now, I have a phone that I can take calls on or can make a call, and the only reason I got it was in case I had an emergency and needed to contact someone or someone had an emergency and needed to contact me.  I must admit I have a desktop computer that I use to load my photos into my photo program and to type my daily stories for my blog, but I'm not connected to the world every single second of the day as most people are with their smartphones.  Technology is a good thing, but don't check out of life just so you can keep a constant watch on the little device in your hand.  So there!  I feel much better!!  But it won't solve anything unless all the people I know read this and turn their phones off when they know they will be with me.   Amen!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.