Do you remember life before the internet?
I spent most of my life prior to the Internet. I worked in the tech industry so I was able to get on it earlier than most, but that didn’t change my regular life.
I never had to worry about social media either. You could just not Answer the phone, or call someone back. When you broke up, it was over.
I could get to anywhere I wanted with a piece of paper with instructions on it, and a (dime)/quarter to call a home phone since we didn’t have cell phones. All my friends could get there too, and we all got there on time, and at the same time. 
That means I also write in cursive, and can drive stick. The first car I had was so old I had to learn how to double clutch to downshift.
We learned to read the weather by observing the wind, the sun, the title patterns, and observe nature.
I had to look up stuff in an encyclopedia, or find a book using the card catalogue system to write term papers.
So if they drop EMP, I’ll be just fine. As for Gen X, why, Z, millennials, and the rest of the people after boomers, they’re effed.


I remember Fibber McGee‘s closet, Inner Sanctum, The Shadow, a female voice on the fone saying “Number, Please,” nickel candy bars, saddle oxfords, 20-cent gasoline, ducktails, hayrides, car fly windows, nickel fone booths, 20-cent movies, drive-ins, paper drives, and even V J Day.
I remember granny gear, LSFMT, Coca-Cola for a nickel, hamburgers for a dime, buying Camels (with a note) for my grandfather at 11 cents a pack, party lines, horse-drawn trash carts, burning autumn leaves by the curb, green stamps, everything closed on Sunday, Ed Murrow, and Charlie McCarthy with HIS Ed.
Most fondly, I remember the girls the Debbies and Sallies and Judies and Charlottes and Kays – and how slender they were, how seductive they could make themselves without Oscar de la Renta or Lancome or Estee Lauder, how mysterious their smiles and their innocent but all-important secrets, how they could slink and strut and completely destroy teenage boys without even knowing about Liz Claiborne or Maggie Sweet or J. Crew. The aroma of not-particularly-good perfume and spearmint gum together with inexpensive but effective shampoo was a lethal combination, elevating my blood pressure to dangerous peaks, causing various organs in my chest to attempt escapes, and putting those jungle-rhythm tom-toms to work in my head.
I live again the outrageous boasts, the preposterous plans, the insane antics I pulled with the Bills and Steves and Alans and Roys and Everetts, draining the hoses at gas stations after they had closed so we could cruise a few more times past the girls’ houses, saving our precious coins for sodas and burgers and fries at the Sugar Bowl or the Town & Country drive-in restaurant on the edge of town where we circled like young Apache renegades, trying to make those ancient engines pop the tires and seriously impress everyone in earshot. I grew up in a little place exactly like all the ones thousands of other kids grew up in during the 50s, the genesis of the American Graffiti subculture. Those little towns were interchangeable, indistinguishable, and absolutely unique to Middle America. Unimaginable freedom linked inextricably to unfathomable angst. Memories I never want to lose and where I’ll live when my eyes and knees give out.
And although I have a mini-Mac instead of an Underwood manual typewriter, I STILL do not own a cellfone of any type and prefer the old black & white noirs to anything ginned up by AI.
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you got it wrong GEN X will survive and thrive! As far as the rest who knows? I have never used mapquest , I still use paper atlases when I have to, I am not hooked up to utilities except electric and when that goes out no problem, i have spring water and horses, I can and preserve my own food as do my family and some friends. The boomers nowadys sit and watch fox news all day and cant cope without their a/c and heat. Butm, i cant blame them they deserve after going decades without.Gen x are a little tougher , because we were latch key kids, self supervised and neglected because both parents had to work, so I think we’ll make it fine.
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