Was walking with the Mrs. and Little Sunflower and passed by a shop selling typewriters as collectibles.  The Little Sunflower was FASCINATED by this ancient document production technology.  The Mrs. and I explained the carriage return and the little “DING” when you were approximately 10 characters from the end of a line.  We both found the EXACT models of typewriter our dads had.  We saw the IBM Selectric, workhouse of the now defunct bank we worked at.

I remember getting our first microwave at home and watching buttered carrots cook.  At the aforementioned bank, we had one building about a 15-minute walk away from ours.  We used to ask, “Anyone have anything going to the other building?” and we’d walk it over.  When that first fax machine appeared, it was like the chimps and the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Before that, at the newspaper, we used the IBM telefax (or “mojo wire” as Hunter S. Thompson called it).  Ernie Mason would intone, “Put it in,” and we’d place the phone into the acoustic couplings and, boy, could you smell the burning of that thermal paper.

The Mrs. once did a school report on family and asked her grandmother what was the most life-changing event.  She expected her to say the Depression or World War II internment, but her grandmother said, “Automation.”  What am I gonna see in the next 20 years, 30 years that will blow me away?  What crazy technology will the Little Sunflower have HER grandchildren try to explain to her?