Reminiscing

That's the way it began, we were hand in hand

Glenn Miller's Band was better than before

We yelled and screamed for more

And the Porter tunes (Night and Day)

Made us dance across the room

It ended all too soon

And on the way back home I promised you'd never be alone

Hurry, don't be late, I can hardly wait

I said to myself when we're old

We'll go dancing in the dark

Walking through the park and reminiscing

I was eighteen years old when that song – “Reminiscing” by The Little River Band – was a hit in 1978.  Even though it spoke of things I had not experienced firsthand, such as the Glenn Miller Band and the Porter tunes, it still spoke directly to me.

I knew of the Glenn Miller Band and the Porter tunes remembrances of my parents.  What I knew most of all was that “Reminiscing” always shrouded me in nostalgia, without fail, each time I heard it.

It seems a greatly different world now from 1978.  The world of my parents was not, in everyday life, largely different from the world of my childhood.  The home telephone, and its one line, was the primary source of communication.  We often waited anxiously for the newspaper to be delivered each morning, likely with the hope that our favorites sports team had won the night before.

Microwaves and personal computers had not yet made their ubiquitous presence known.  Let alone cell and smart phones, at a frequency of one per person rather than family.

There were still only three television networks.  If the President had made a speech the night before, chances were that a kid was pretty upset because there had been nothing to watch for most of that night.  Instead, it was the pre-analysis, the speech itself, and then the post-wrap, all of which seemed to go on interminably.

Baseball was aired once each week, and that’s why the national Game of the Week was so important.  Without it, live baseball on TV was something you only heard about from the big-city folk.

Now, 34 years has once again lapsed, and it’s 2012 instead of 1978.  Despite being the same in number, those 34 years differ greatly qualitatively.  The world of my generation seems greatly different from that of the younger sect.  Nothing then was available on demand, whether news or entertainment.  If you missed the start of a TV show, it was gone forever, or at least until some months later when reruns finally allowed another chance to see it.

Now, you simply go online to watch the video, if you haven’t DVR’d the program.  Sports scores are available instantaneously, and you may not even need them if you are watching the games live on your PC or smart phone, as I do with major league baseball, which also provides archives of any games you may have missed.

Control is now largely in the hands, literally, of the recipient.  In many ways, that truly is advancement.  Yet, despite all that, in the minds of some of us, it is quite common to be walking through the park and reminiscing.