“We were seventeen, 
but we were never their age.”  
~ Unknown

I wasn’t planning to write a blog post today. I’ve been preoccupied of late working on another project. While taking a quick look at Facebook to check messages this afternoon, the image above caught my attention and reminded me of this quote.

The source of the quote above is unknown to me, but I said something similar to all three of my boys at one time or another. Seventeen in 1971 was a totally different experience than being seventeen in the new millennium. In my youth, we didn’t have cell phones. We didn’t have computers. Heck, we didn’t even have cable television. If I remember correctly, we had only five television channels from which to choose at our home in San Francisco. And most importantly, perhaps, we did not have social media.

Life was much more simple in the ‘70s. I don’t mean that it was necessarily easier, but it was definitely less complicated than what high school students experience today. Young people communicated either in person or over the land line in their family home. Occasionally, I suppose, some resorted to spending a dime to use a public telephone. In the ‘70s, no one was concerned about mass shootings in schools, malls, or theaters, nor were they concerned about child abduction. We had not yet received the Kevin Collins wake-up call I mentioned in a previous blog post. 

When I gathered with my friends, we went out for pizza, to movies, or bowling, or hung out at Ghirardelli Square in The City, where we could feast on those fancy desserts in the ice cream parlor there. No one was distracted by cell phones or preoccupied with finding Pokémon characters hiding in the neighborhood. Our lives were real, not virtual. We paid attention to each other and savored the time we spent together. 

By the time my sons were in high school, the playing field had changed dramatically. Not only was I unfamiliar with the rules of the game, I didn’t even know what game was being played! And I certainly did not understand the consequences my boys were experiencing of the existence which was their present reality.

Now I’m a grandpa. My oldest grandson is eight years old. In just nine brief years, and yes, they will be brief, he will turn seventeen. I cannot begin to imagine what his world will be like in 2032. Driverless vehicles, artificial intelligence, and other emerging technologies will, once again, transform the playing field of life. It’s exciting, and downright terrifying.

At least I’ll be able to show my grandson a photo similar to the one above and say, “This is what Grandma looked like when she was seventeen!”