The Old Ways of Doing Things

Yet another in the "Gosh, I'm old!" series. (Soon to be a category here at the Ping.)

As I'm sure you're aware, any kid born in or after 1995 will have The Complete Internet experience in his or her life forever. They won't know a time without it. That's pretty amazing when you think about it. Worse, I started thinking about explaining how we Used To have to do stuff before the internet (and you know, I'll just assume BBSes got swept under the rug.) And it sounds archaic. Join in:

In order to contact someone far away, one had a couple of options. One could call them long distance and pay through the nose. Or, one could get out a pen and paper, write down one's thoughts, toss that in an envelope, address it (heaven forbid you don't know the ZIP code), buy a stamp, lick it, put it on the envelope, seal the envelope, and then take it down to the mailbox.

In order to get directions, one had to take out a map and either highlight the desired route or take out a map and write down step by step directions.

What else you got? The whole "mail versus email" thing was painful to think about.