Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for: High Tech Lovelies

I was born in 1975, grew up during the eighties, and was a high school student during the high-waisted nineties. The first national news story I remember clearly was the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. I had two very clear sense memoriesfrom that day. The first was guilt. During our kindergarten election, I had fallen in love with Carter (something about his background as a peanut farmer charmed the 5-year-old in me and I drew haearts around his photo on the mock ballot Mrs. Valardo handed out). Could my love of the peanut man have hurt the jelly bean man? Such is child logic.

The second was utter impatience. We were in the car driving--this was prime music time given that turning on the home stereo was a rarity--and the men on the air were just yak, yak, yaking about this shot in the arm when what I needed--most desperately--was my daily fix of Olivia Newton John or Air Supply. But an illustration about the evolution of my musical tastes aside (and I'm a firm believer that you cannot hold a 5-year-old responsible for something like musical taste), the point is that during this national crisis, the radio was my primary source. Not the television, not the Internet, not the blogosphere, not tweets, not Facebook, not YouTube. And while we're at it, when I did get to play a record at home it was a record (I think at that time I had one from Lionel Ritchie and one of Olivia Newton John in workout gear, but my memory is hazy). And if I wanted to take my music with me to my grandparents' house, I was all out of luck (ha!) because ipods weren't even a twinkle in Steve Jobs's eye. And let's not even talk about how it would be ten years before my family bought its first desktop computer--a 486.

I think it's fair to say that since 1981, technology has prolioiferated. The VHS released us from the tyranny of first-run movies, the DVD opened the door for netflix and freed us all from the patchy selection at our local video stores which have gone quietly out of business as more and more people get red envelopes in the mail. Tivo has released us from anything so quaint as a programming schedule, and the 30-second skip button has pardoned all of us from ever having to watch any commericals we don't want to see (though in our house, we will often rewind to catch the latest Mac vs. PC commercial--but only once, and then we skip it after that).

On the highways, I have a GPS to keep me from getting lost without having to carry a piece of paper in my hand, and if I want a cup of tea, I can tell the GPS to find me the nearest Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts. And when I'm on the highway, I have a transponder that links my lincense plate to my credit card so I can zip through the tolls while the rest of the saps wait to pay their actual dollars to an actual person. I'm grateful for the time that little plastic square saves me, of course, but I'm at least equally grateful for the sense of awe I feel as I peer at the drivers who still haven't gotten a fob knowing that the highway department gives them away for free now.

And last night I went jogging with my new nano which means I had a mix tape of goof pop I love without having to spend hours making anything so silly as a mix tape. And that nano was connected to a pedometer attached to my shoe that tracked my mileage. Actually, it did one better than that. I punched in how far I wanted to go and at the halfway point a robot woman interrupted the song to tell me I was halfway there. Then in the home stretch she (it?) let me know when I had 400 meters, 300 meters, 200, 100 to go. When I was done she (it?) congratulated me on finishing my workout. The five year old I was would sum all this wonder up with apt lyrics from one of her least favorite Olivia Newton John songs: You have to believe [this is] magic.

But electronics aren't magic. What's magic are the advances in medicine. After the run, I got a migraine (my seocnd in a couple of weeks, and I have to think that the aspartame in my gum isn't as innocuous as I thought it was). And though I lost the rest of the night, a couple Imitrex (a blood-brain barrier medicine) and a good night's sleep and I'm ready for a long day. Well, a bit tired, and a little shaky, but as a kid with migraines I used to lose days. So this is magic.

And with that I got to run. But when I hook up my ipod to my car stero and punch in my GPS route and zip through the fast lane with a head that's good as new, I'll be thinking about how grateful I am that it's 2009 and not 1981. For technilogical upgrades, yeah, but the political upgrades aren't too shabby either. Reagan to Obama in one generation, baby. Now there's a post
all by itself!