Generation gap
25 Jul 2015
Mobile phones, the internet and social media. Times have certainly changed, notes Maureen Stahl from the Colac Otway Probus Club.
You paid nearly a 100 dollars for a pair of jeans that have rips.”
“I bet you paid as much at my age,” said my granddaughter with hands on hips.
“I didn’t wear jeans at your age,” I told her and after some thought,
I said, “It was after your dad was born that my first pair of jeans was bought.”
“Well what did you wear to uni?” she asked me with a puzzled look
As she opened her battered backpack and put in her lunch and a book.
“In summer we wore pretty dresses, court shoes and a handbag to match.”
With my eye on the jeans I went on, “Never anything with a tear or a patch.”
“We wore stockings even on hot days, nylons with seams at the back.
We carried our books in a briefcase.” I frowned at her battered backpack.
“Our hair was teased to perfection, hairspray kept it looking just right.
And then we topped off our outfit with gloves, these were usually white.”
“White gloves Nan! You’ve got to be joking.” “No,” I said. “My words are quite true
In winter we wore a skirt and a twinset, even tailored slacks were taboo.”
“Oh Nan!” By now she was giggling. “I’ll show you some photos," I said.
I went to the bedroom and got out my album from a box that was under the bed.
"Oh Nan, you look so old-fashioned standing there so demure and so sweet
And look at the captions you’ve written with your fine-liner; they are so neat.”
“It wasn’t a fine-liner I wrote with; there were no fine-liners back then.
Those captions were written, I’ll have you know, with blue ink in a fountain pen.
Filling the pen was a messy business I always had a blue finger and if I splashed the ink on my clothes then I’d have a stain that would linger.”
“Why didn’t you just use a biro? All that messing would send me demented!”
“I couldn’t have used a biro, my dear, because biros had not been invented.”
“No fine-liners or biros to use, but you surely had textas,” she said.
“Oh no! We didn’t have Textas at all, we used coloured pencils instead.”
“Coloured pencils! How terribly boring.” “They weren’t boring,” I quickly replied.
“You could do light and shade and blend colours, and our Derwents were something we prized.”
“Oh Nan, you lived in such primitive times; you did have it tough you poor thing.”
Before I had time to answer her mobile phone started to ring.
As she chatted to her unseen friend, I thought about how times change.
The things that we took for granted, to our grandkids seem very strange.
And all the modern technology that we struggle to comprehend,
Is like second nature to them and they’re abreast of every new trend.
They have more material things, they have instant communication,
And they can visit so many places with modern fast transportation.
They seem to have life easier than we did in our teens,
But I wouldn’t swap places with them for I couldn’t bear to wear ripped jeans.
Maureen is now in the running to win the annual Paul Henningham Award for Literary Excellence. Put pen to paper and send your work to Active Retirees. EMAIL: [email protected] POST: Smile! Active Retirees, 369a Darling Street, Balmain NSW 2041.
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