More Things I Remember

• I remember when I was worried about how to pay for daycare.  Now I'm worried about how to pay for college.
• I remember when I was focusing on trying to teach my son to ride a bike.  Within a few months, I'll be focusing on trying to teach him to drive a car. Yikes!
• I remember when we actually got snow during the winter.  Seriously, I saw more snow in one day in Alabama in early December than I've seen in Missouri in the 2 months since.
• I remember the View-Master, which was virtual reality (VR) before VR was a thing.

• I remember when the Etch-A-Sketch was a popular toy, even though I hated that thing.  I never could draw anything decent at all with it.  Of course, that has less to do with the Etch-A-Sketch and more to do with my lack of artistic ability.
• I remember many family vacations.  Over the years, we traveled pretty much from coast to coast and a lot of places in between.  I've splashed in the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.  We visited the beach, the mountains, numerous national parks, national monuments and, of course, Civil War battlefields.  I feel very fortunate to have had parents who put a priority on those experiences.  For even though I've lived in the same city my entire life (save my four years of college in Texas), I've seen much of the country and experienced a lot of things.
• I remember my brother getting car sick on many of those vacations.  In an elevator in Kansas City.  In Griffith Park in LA. On the side of the road in Wyoming.  And, most disgustingly, all over the dashboard and windshield of my uncle's car that he let us borrow for a trip.  Seriously, he's thrown up in more states than a lot of people have visited. 
• I remember the old radio in our 1983 Honda Accord on a few of those trips.  You know the old radios, the ones where you pushed a button and the little needle jumped over to the next preset station?  There were no seek or search functions on those radios, so it was sometimes quite difficult to find a music station to listen to.  And we didn't have satellite radio or cassette tapes or CDs.  It was a lot harder to entertain yourself back then.  Now, between smart phones, tablets, portable DVD players and satellite radio, my kids have a wealth of entertainment choices for a long road trip.  Not that I'm jealous or bitter...
• I remember when hit songs were written by just one or two songwriters.  In the '60s, you had Brian Wilson crafting hits for the Beach Boys, while John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote countless hits for The Beatles.  In the 1970s, you had Don Henley and Glenn Frey writing hits for the Eagles. For most of the 1960s through the 1990s, the Grammy for "Song of the Year" was awarded for songs written by one or two songwriters in almost every year.  Compare that to this year.  A Bruno Mars song, "That's What I Like" won the award and it was written by a total of - not two, not three - but no fewer than 8 songwriters.  8! It took that many people to write a 3 and a half minute pop song?  It's not like this is a peer reviewed research paper or a college textbook.  Just as bad, of the other 4 songs that were nominated, 3 of them had at least 5 co-writers!  Whatever happened to a musician who could write and perform his or her own music, rather than have to enlist almost an entire Supreme Court's worth of songwriters?  It's ridiculous.
• I remember when the national anthem wasn't a source of controversy.  It was simply a song to celebrate our country and not a political football used for completely different purposes.
• I remember when Donald Trump was a rich guy who was famous for making deals, writing books and slapping his name on gaudy buildings.  Now he's a rich guy who is famous for not making deals, writing incendiary tweets and generally doing his best to stir the pot and upset people.
• I remember when the Big 10 had 10 teams and the Big 12 had 12 teams.  Now, the Big 10 has 14 teams and the Big 12 has 10 teams.  At least the Pac 12 was intelligent enough to actually adjust the name of the conference to accurately reflect the number of teams.
• I remember when the Southeastern Conference only had teams in the southeastern quadrant of the country.  Now it has a team in Texas (which is southern but certainly not eastern) and a team in Missouri (which is neither southern nor eastern).
• I remember when the Atlantic Coast Conference only had teams that were in states on the Atlantic Coast.  Now it has teams in Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana, three states that are nowhere near the Atlantic Coast.  Of course, the Big East now features teams in Nebraska, Wisconsin and Illinois, none of which are even in the Eastern Time Zone.  What should we make of the fact that our premier collegiate conferences are geographically challenged not to mention really bad at math?
• I remember when I was the new kid on the block and the youngest person in my department at work.  Now, I'm one of the most senior employees and I'm older than about half of the department.
• I remember when Darius Rucker had hits on the pop charts and Taylor Swift had hits on the country charts rather than the other way around.
• I remember when I did my first blog post in January 2016.  Now, two years and nearly 70 blog posts later, we're still going strong.  Thanks for reading!