Cyndi's Two Cents

Lost skills

Commentary.

Technology is a wonderful thing.  One of the greatest benefits of technology is that it does a lot of the thinking for us.  One of the greatest disadvantages of technology is that it does a lot of the thinking for us.

There are skills that I learned from my parents that were once a part of my life and theirs and certainly used by my grandparents that are all but a memory for many in society today.  The first skill that comes to mind is handwriting. In a box somewhere in my attic there are a handful of birthday cards from the 1960’s with notes from my grandparents and their signatures.  Their penmanship resembles that of a modern-day professional calligrapher.  Sadly, my signature gets less impressive with every passing year.  And now, quite often I use a “digital signature” to sign many documents.

I travel quite a bit for my job at Brownfield Ag News and have said many times, “I don’t know what I did before I had Global Positioning System (GPS) on my phone.” The truth of the matter is that I spent more time planning.  Last year my parents and I traveled to Texarkana, Arkansas to visit my uncle.  My dad planned the trip using a map.  It was indeed one of the most enjoyable trips I have taken in many years. Much of the credit for the enjoyment was the company with whom I traveled, but having a navigator using a paper map he held in his hands was delightful.

Remember when all cameras used film?  Using a 110 or 126 instamatic camera with a flash cube, we carefully planned the shots as we knew we were sending that film off to be developed.  There was no instant gratification.  There were no do-overs.  We had to wait a week to 10 days for those pictures to arrive in the mailbox. 

When my parents bought me my first car in 1978, I knew the most basic of auto maintenance.  At 16, I knew how to change a tire, check my oil and other fluids and was confident that if I had a problem I could not identify and my parents weren’t there, someone in my circle of friends could help me figure it out.  At almost-58 years of age, I drive a Chevy Equinox, and to be honest with you, I’ve not so much as added windshield wiper fluid or checked my oil.  I can read my wiper fluid levels along with air pressure levels for each tire and percentage of oil life left on a nifty little digital display on my dashboard.  If I have a flat tire, I am more likely to call AAA than to fix it myself. 

I know many women who are on par with many men when it comes to backing a livestock trailer or a wagon stacked high with hay.  I am not one of those women.  I have a bit of a problem with depth perception and lack the confidence to pull it off.  There were times when backing a truck or car into a tight space made me anxious.  Now that I have a vehicle with not only a back-up camera, but Surround Vision that uses 4 cameras to create an overhead view of the area around my vehicle, I am fearless when it comes to squeezing in and out of tight spaces.  My mom and dad could do the very same thing without a single camera and probably do it in half the time it takes me with all of mine!

I do not want to give up Google, cameras on cars or GPS, but it couldn’t hurt to polish up on some of those forgotten skills. . .just in case.