My reflection on "Failing to Learn Japanese in Only Five minutes"

Whenever I was a kid back in Texas, I’d always tease my parents about how old they were. I’d watched old John Hughes movies and scoff at the record players or Walkmans. I’d laugh over old pictures of them with their big ‘80s style perms and nerdy glasses, dressed in weird bright floral clothes that they vehemently assured me were “all the rage” when taken. 

One time, when I was roughly eight years young, I snuck deep into my mother’s closet and became overwhelmed with giggles at the sight her old drivers license (Debra Winger hair, red lips, and all). Though she graciously laughed along and showed me an old scrapbook, she claimed that one day, in the not so distant future, my children/nieces/nephews would be doing the exact same thing with me. She dared to suggest that I would be the ancient one sharing my photographs, not mocking the age of others. I refused to even acknowledge such a suggestion as being in the realm of possibility. Never would I be “out of date” or “old”. I always held a firm belief that my existence coincided with the absolute and complete development of humankind’s technological capacity. In my mind, the world would stop developing because their was nothing left to develop. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Unbeknownst to me, my mother’s claims would ring true very soon, with the source of such harsh reality to come from none other than my little sister.

Just last week, over the dinner table, my family and I found ourselves reminiscing over our time in America. We remembered going CD shopping fo JoJo records, how we had a cassette player in my dad’s old car, and our VCR, on which my elder sister and I would relentlessly watch Spy Kids and The Sound of Music, constantly having to rewind the tapes after each viewing. We recalled when Youtube just began to grow popular, and how we would still send handwritten cards to our cousins on their birthdays (but had to send them a couple of days in advance so that they would arrive at the perfect time). As we referenced everything nostalgic thing from our past, my little sister was in awe. Half the things we spoke of she didn’t know. She couldn’t imagine a time when our house only had two computers (and we had to unplug the phone to use the internet), a time when the primary use of the letter “i” wasn’t as a prefix for a string of elaborate technological products, or a time when the word “tweet” was only used when reenacting the chirping of a bird during a rousing rendition of "Old MacDonald". Though I am only five years older than my sister, I was the old lady who lived before the technological revolution she was always a part of.

When I realized that, things began to catch up to me. Future generations will look at my drivers license and wonder why I didn’t have a peacock on my head, or why my hair wasn’t bright green. I’ll still be clinging to my letters and DVDs while the young people will have chips implanted in their heads and hovercraft shoes. I can't wait.