on realizing I haven't embraced the future

The following One Minute Writer prompt, from today, continued a line of thought I've been following for a bit.

About 350,000 babies were born today.* Using your imagination, describe one aspect of the world in which they will be living when they are 20 years old. *Source: ask.com

I was reading a completely cheesy book to Pic today and there was mention of cable. A bit of background: The book features a bear family. The young boy bear has to do a research and then a presentation to his class on the benefits of fruits and vegetables. The family ends up partaking the "5-a-Day Challenge", in which the bears challenge themselves to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day. The name of the challenge makes me think this book was written for the USDA or some such organization...I'm not sure where the book is right now, so I can't check.

Of course, as seems to be the case with many children's books, the mom in the story (if she wasn't referred to as the mom, we'd still know it was her because the otherwise unclothed bears do wear accessories and she wears an apron throughout) seems to have no issues to work on (an addiction to Ben & Jerry's perhaps?) and she's totally on board with the idea. The other bear family members, however, need a bit of convincing. There's an athlete sister, a dad who wants to fit into his ski pants (although it doesn't seem to be winter or snowy) and a couch potato uncle who asks at one point if they are getting cable. (Okay, so I really didn't need to provide you with that synopsis, but, hey, I did. Ahem, back to the original point.)

I stopped for a moment to explain to Pic what "getting cable" meant. Here at La Casa B, we don't have cable and haven't...ever? We've had satellite, but it's been almost a year-and-a-half since we've had that. In our last home, we didn't have a good line of sight (or whatever you call it) for the dish to point to. It took a bit for Pic to realize that we could no longer "go back" and watch again something she found particularly funny. We have the channels you don't have to pay for, although we did have to get one of those converter boxes because our tv is apparently that old, although I swear it isn't. We do subscribe to Netflix and we have a wide variety of VHS and DVDs from which to choose for our mind-numbing pleasure (I just watched Stranger Than Fiction tonight).

Wow, I seems to be having a problem closing the floodgates here tonight. Yes, I had to stop and explain cable to Pic. When I was younger, no one would have had to explain that to me. (They might have had to explain it to me when I was five, but probably not by the time I was a year or two into elementary school.)

So, what else is going to boggle my child's mind? I'm thinking things like Beta (which I barely remember) and cassette tapes (although I have some of these and a tape recorder on which we can listen to these -- we just don't use them). Car phones -- like actual car phones, not just cell phones that can be used by the driver to text message while she or he drives. Trapper Keepers* and Peachies (is that how you spell that? I always thought so because of the color).

We were out for a bike ride earlier this evening and I spotted a locksmith's van. The name of the company? Matt Lock. I don't believe I've ever seen Matlock, but at least I get the reference, but I wonder how many people that's completely lost on?

I know there is a vast amount of things that will be lost before she even becomes aware of them, and I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I guess I'm thinking that it makes me feel strangely old and I'm definitely not old.

And, oh, to think of the things she'll have to explain to me. All of the pop culture references that I don't even get now (I only have the slightest idea who people like Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift (actor? singer?) are and I know pretty much nothing about video games). I can imagine the eye-rolling right now when she's trying to describe the newest fad and I'm making references to Alanis Morissette and the Cranberries and MC Hammer's parachute pants (or, really, just MC Hammer).

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It's late and I'm branching out all over the place. I meant for this to be somewhat short. I wondered what references others thought future generations completely wouldn't get. But, then I let my digressions overtake me.

So, off to some other middle of the night project I can get to, a project which requires no (delayed) interaction with others. G'night.