RE: Ringtones Used To Cost Money, Mini Disc Players were Awesome, & I Miss Video Shops 👩🏻‍💻👩🏻‍💻

Oh what perfect memories!

They probably weren't perfect but that is how I remember them. My Walkman was my most treasured possession. At night I would take my gorgeous little mongrel Bess out walking while listening to my latest 80's compilation, I walked and walked and walked.

Me, my dog and my music, oh there was nothing better after all my family didn't understand me... Oh man, the angst is almost palpable even as I think on it. I must have been a right moody sod, I was right though, they didn't understand me, so we went very separate ways a couple of years later, till I needed to step up to give care when the 'golden ones' headed for the hills (like many families).

As I write this, my headphones are round my neck, they always are. Perhaps I am reliving the time when I felt most lost and most content all at one... Bloody teenagers, right?

Photo from about 2 weeks back, was never meant to be a photo anyone would see, so ignore the haphazard nature and my temporary shaved head... Long story 😁 The point being I have a hundred pics just like this, where taking off the headphones would not occur to me, they are a part of me.

It looks like we both got a Walkman the same year, incredibly, curious if you went out with a couple of battery changes in hand 🤣

I would spend half my life back then browsing Blockbuster choosing and replacing at least 500 VHS tapes before I could settle on 3 I always chose the ones that needed rewinding! 😫 CD's, DVD'S, floppy discs came and went, in a flurry (with hindsight) I miss the local phone box, I spent so, so many hours in there popping coins talking to friends I had seen only hours before at school, we actually talked with words, literally no 😁😎😕😩💯 nobody, I mean nobody had ever encountered, nor had any clue what a LOL was!

I do love technology, I do, but damn... It seems to come along, have 10,000 upgrades and iterations then become obsolete faster than we can even imagine, it feels so 'disposable'. I have watched my kids grow in a world that is so vastly different and almost bereft of 'proper' social interaction, you mentioned MSN, that is where I trace the genesis too, honestly.

I imagine a generation from now, teens scoffing at the archaic technology of AI before it became obsolete when answers just appear matrix-like on the retinal interface screen (hmmm... I should patent that now! 🤔)

Imagine if I had tried to explain the concept of Hive to you back in 1986? I'm not sure we would have even been able to find the vocabulary to articulate it.

It's been fun to think on these things, thanks for the prompt that probably wasn't intended as a prompt.

Have a fabulous Monday Riv and a week that becomes steadily more magnificent as it progresses 😎🌻

P.S- I will never stop enjoying the smell of the dusty pages of a book😁