OMG--I'm "Blogging!"

I can't believe I'm BLOGGING.

You might be thinking, "big deal--everyone blogs!" That might be true if you're either under 40 or a computer geezer geek. But for the over 50's gang, it's another new way of communicating that we know we'd better learn or be left in the dust!


Give me a break. This is what telephones looked like when I was growing up in 1950's? These suckers were heavy, too! If you answered one of these babies too quickly, you could knock yourself out!

Communication consisted only of telephones and snail mail.







In the 1960's, it cost 4 cents to mail a letter. These were our options and compared today, messages moved along like turtles in mud.





I was married in the 70's; "slim line, touch tone" phones in avocado, harvest gold or poppy red were the latest craze, but not much changed when it came to communication in our day-to-day lives.






However, you might find it interesting to note that the first cellular phone call was made in 1973. Can you imagine toting this thing around in your purse? It weighed TWO pounds! For the average American, it was still either a phone call or a letter.







"Depersonalization" began in the 1980's when AT&T started making folks pay for their own telephone equipment.

At first, it was accepted practice for a business to use an answering machine after hours or a household to use it during the work day when no one was home. But soon, we learned that we could screen our calls and BINGO--a new era of freedom and an indirect means of communication had begun and cassettes were turning like crazy inside these machines.


In the 1990's, telephone companies began to offer "voice mail," "call block," "caller ID," and other tools that allowed us to use our own telephones the way we wanted to use them.

The 2000's certainly has given way to cyber communications among other things. It seems that even e-mail has been outnumbered by handy mobile texting.

I still haven't figured out what Face Book is; that's next on my agenda, but for now, Blogging will be my "new project" until the next new thing comes along.

Last week, after "girls night out" with my daughters-in-law, I realized that if I didn't learn to blog soon, I was going to be the unknown grandmother of their children!