Emily will be eight. In just a few short weeks. I find that I can’t really find the energy to lament her growing anymore. It’s not that I don’t care, but I’ve finally discovered that it’s inevitable and that crying over it really doesn’t change anything. In addition, I’ve found that there are things to love (and dislike) about each age and stage which somehow makes the whole ordeal more bearable.
One thing that I find most striking is the difference between my childhood and Emily’s. Not materially, although that is a part of it. Only 23 years separate the two of us. Not even a quarter of a century and yet so much has changed from the time I was eight and now.
When I was eight we owned one t.v. I have no idea what the size was, but it did not have a remote control and it had knobs you had to turn. We had a box with a button on it that you could push in an attempt to turn your antenna to bring in better reception. You could even turn the frequency to UHF and try to tune in more channels too.
Now we have two t.vs, our newest a flat panel, high def LCDtv. Emily has never had to get up to turn the knob, nor tune in the antenna nor been impressed when a channel from a distant city showed up on the dial during certain weather patterns. She has no time or patience for black and white movies or t.v. shows (not even watching I Love Lucy when I tried to share with her. Maybe she’s too young?) She has never lived at a time when there weren’t t.v. channels dedicated to children on 24 hours a day. Now you can even get programming from PBS and the smallest of babies 24 hours a day.
She knows how to use a DVR.
She knows how to buy pay per veiw.
When I was eight we didn’t even own a VCR and cable consisted of a converter box that allowed you to tune in HBO. Now we have about a bazillion channels and Emily is just as bored on rainy afternoons as I was when we only had a handful of channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and a few local affilates which have pretty much died off the exception being WCIU out of Chicago, locally).
When I was eight i could play alone undisturbed in the back yard for hours. I could walk three doors down without my mom being in a tizzy. I even walked myself down the street, around the corner and to the bus stop, not a long walk in distance but certainly out of my Mom’s line of sight. People gave out apples and homemade popcorn balls for Halloween.
After a local report of a child abduction I’m afraid of Emily walking to the corner without being in my line of vision. Even last year I would stand in the garage and watch her at the bustop, a whole two houses away. Just in case. I do my very best to give her that freedom that makes up the happy memories of so much of my childhood, but the reality of the news reports gives me pause and my heart pounds hard in my chest when she takes just a second or two too long to complete a simple task outside that is out of my line of vision. I’m thankful that one of her best friends lives directly behind us and that they are mostly content with playing in our adjoining yards, out of the view of strangers driving by and in my direct line of sight.
We inspect Emily’s Halloween candy carefully (though not as carefully as my Dad at the height of the needles in candy scare when he would literally run our candy under his metal detector discarding anything that set it off). Our biggest concern now is peanut products, but we would quickly throw out anything not individually wrapped and sealed. No more homemade popcorn balls, apples or cookies in the Halloween bag. They’re a waste of money. Who would eat them?
When I was eight we had tornado drills and fire drills.
Emily has “lock down” drills where the children practice hiding in darkened class rooms in case of the school being invaded by someone with evil motives. I was more shaken by her announcement than she was. She was matter of fact, the point of the drill downplayed by kind teachers who made vague references to “bad” guys. Emily’s mind can’t conceive, yet, of what those bad people could do and what sort of terror caused schools to practice hiding the children in silence.
In some ways, Emily’s world is worse than mine was at eight. She has more homework than I did. She can’t play with as much freedom as I did. She spends more time in front of the t.v. and computer than I did. She had to ride in a car seat longer than I did (and still could be in a booster seat by all rights).
But in some ways, her world is better. So many people my age and older talk about how “bad’ things are now and allude to the “good old days” but honestly, I don’t think that’s the case. I think we hear a lot more harrowing things because we live in a world with 24-hour news channels, desperate to gain our attention. We live in a world with three hour long news programs in the morning, following by a half an hour of news at noon, 1 to 2 hours of news in the evening and 30 to 60 minutes of news at bedtime. I mean, there comes a point when what’s going on locally isn’t going to capture any one’s attention and they have to turn to other communities.
But, I digress. Emily lives in a world without boundaries or borders. She can easily travel across the world. She can connect with people across the world on the Internet. In a minute. She can see family and friends real time, in streaming video. She can learn anything. This week we looked up pictures of a Chinese Crested, a hairless cat and a mud puppy to compare who was ugliest. We live in an amazing time. Truly. Full of things and learning. Is the trade off fair? I can’t really say, but things certainly have changed.
