You know how there's that thing about not sitting so close to the TV because it'll make you blind? It was basically one of those parental things that was a mish-mash of boogyman threat and hidden practicality. The boogyman bit was sort of based on the principle that those old TVs came out at around the time that the nuclear age was really taking off and anything that made light was RADIOACTIVE. The grain of truth came from the fact that staring into a flickering lightbulb hurts your eyes (strains corneas, rods, cones, etc).
The moment came when I realised that I'll never be able to tell Charlie not to sit so close to the damn TV or he'll fry his eyeballs.
Why?
What's your TV made out of? LCD flat screen?
What are reading this off of right now?
How am I going to explain the difference there?
He has never been exposed to a CRT TV.
You know what else he's never seen, and will probably never use?
A pulse phone.
One day he's going to ask why we call it "dialling" when we're clearly "pressing".
But the question I'm waiting for with keen interest is:
I'll probably explain it and get a slackjawed stare.
"You mean you carried around your work on little pieces of plastic? That you could just lose?"
Sapphire is always fascinated about film in cameras. "You mean you took a photo and couldn't see what it was going to be like, then posted it in an airline sickness bag and a few weeks later some photos would come back? What if you didn't like them?"
ReplyDeleteI often didn't which is why about 1% of what I took back in the day never made it to the album and it's difficult to convince Sapphire that I even existed before 2003.....
....and dare I mention 1975, when television turned to colour?
ReplyDeleteSix year old me sat there, absolutely mindblown when Fat Cat was shown to be orange wearing pink trousers!
I'd be interested to see what Sapph thinks of the little floppy disc icons there.
ReplyDeleteSome of us do carry work on plastic, but these days they're flash drives. So much easier than carrying the laptop everywhere.
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