Remember the good old days when "Netflix" was just a cute way of saying "I have three VCRs stacked on top of each other," and "streaming" meant that you had a decent chance of getting the neighbor's cable signal if you positioned your antenna just right? Ah, yes, the 80s and 90s—a time when the most advanced technology we had was a Walkman and a bag full of mixtapes, painstakingly crafted in hopes of wooing the swoon-worthy crush from homeroom. Who knew that our biggest challenge back then would be trying to untangle the cords from our cassette players?
Life without the internet was simple yet perilous. Remember when you had to *actually* go to blockbusters to rent a movie? You’d brace yourself to dive into the heart of the neon-lit retail jungle, armed with a crumpled up ten-dollar bill and the notion that you were just "browsing" when in reality, you would likely leave with a VHS of *Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure* (if it was still there). And if the film was sold out? Don’t even think about a backup; the sheer absence of DVDs meant your streaming options that night involved flipping between channels or standing in front of the fridge, pondering the finer points of 12-hour-old pizza. Ah, culinary freedom.
Then there were the phone calls... Oh, the horror! You’d actually have to talk to someone on a corded phone. You couldn’t just slide into their DMs and ghost them; you had to engage in real human interaction. Can you imagine the nerve-wracking tension that came with dialing a crush’s number, praying you wouldn’t accidentally reach their mom or, worse, get a busy signal leading to an eternal game of call-waiting roulette? "Oh, did I just hang up? Guess I’ll never know…" Talk about heart palpitations that made the caffeine in your Jolt Cola seem like a soothing chamomile tea.
So here’s to us, dear Gen-Xers: the last generation to remember making plans without a text, styling our hair to level 10 perfection with just a can of Aqua Net, and living free from the tyranny of social media likes. As we prance into this world filled with emojis and TikTok dances we couldn't even begin to comprehend, let us proudly hold onto our roots, our mixtapes, and our VCRs—that is, if we can find the remote… in between the couch cushions.