Recognizing the changes in our world

If you don’t think your mind, actions or lifestyle have changed over the years, stop for a moment and think of how you do things differently. Some of the changes have been positive, others maybe not so much, and some differences we haven’t noticed but have profoundly altered the way we do things.

It became readily apparent to me recently when a group of friends and I decided to attend a trivia night at The Yard in McCook. Trivia nights are now common thanks to digital software that easily provides questions and, most commonly, four answers to choose from.

But the recent trivia night was held analog style – i.e., no phones allowed on the table, no Googling permitted and no online searching of any kind. I cannot tell you how many times I reached toward my pocket, which held my phone, with each question that our table couldn’t answer. Many of the questions that trivia master Kevin Cochran came up with did not have softball answers. Throughout the evening, I did wonder if he really knew all the answers to the questions before he created the trivia night, such as the smallest bone in your body, or if he did what we couldn’t do – looked it up on the little computer in his pocket, aka, his phone.

It is not instinctual to just look up the information we need. We no longer can leave a conversation with everyone agreeing to disagree because the issue couldn’t be clarified or verified. We have a world of information at our fingertips, and it’s hard not to access it all the time.

It took true willpower to not pull out our phones and look up the answers, something I was loath to admit but that we managed for the entire evening. It wouldn’t hurt each of us to put away our phones for an hour, a day or even a week. In fact, it would probably do each of us some good.

Our minds and lives have changed, and rarely do we take a moment to acknowledge how they have evolved. Most of the changes have involved digital technology.

For example, I asked my son to text his piano teacher to let her know that he was unable to make practice because of another commitment. For the previous 10 years, I reached out to her whenever there was a change to my son’s schedule. But if my son can drive, he can reach out to his teacher, so I forwarded her contact info to him.

Later in the day, his teacher texted me to ask why he wasn’t at practice. I learned that he had texted her landline. He didn’t realize, didn’t think about, didn’t consider that you can’t text every phone number in your contacts. But to young people, every phone number they use is a cellphone, and therefore able to receive text messages. But now he knows.

Because of technology, certain sayings are now out of date.

We recently went through the semiannual time change, falling back an hour. I’m waiting for our Unicameral to come to a consensus on this issue. Just pick one direction or another with the time change and stick with it.

Until that happens, twice a year we see commercials, view social media posts and hear people say, “Don’t forget to move your clocks.” For my children, though, I’m not sure if they “moved” a single clock. Their phones are automatically updated. Their watches synced with the new time on their own. The only clock they adjusted was the one in their vehicles, and they likely don’t pay any attention to those numbers since their phone is sitting right there.

Changes to our world are not entirely about the evolution and addition of technology.

Several years ago, one of my sons was writing thank-you cards after high school graduation. He knew how to write the letter correctly and properly address the card. But when it came time to put a stamp on the envelope, he ran into a stumbling block – he couldn’t get the stamp to stick.

Now, I must back up because the situation wasn’t entirely his fault. My mother-in-law had built quite a stockpile of stamps before she passed away, and my son was using those stamps – some of which were peel-and-stick but many others had to be licked. Up until that point, my son had never encountered the kind with glue on the back, and it never occurred to him to lick the small piece of paper. We just took for granted that he knew what to do. And while it gave us a short chuckle, he did finish the thank-yous with both styles of stamps.

Lest anyone think our children are too reliant on technology, rest assured that we keep them thinking and on their toes.

After all, most of our vehicles are manuals, so all of them know how to drive a stick. The majority of our cars are so old that they don’t have any modern technology like backup cameras or lane assist. And one truck is so old that it has what could trip up many people: hand-crank windows.

Change and technology can be good, but taking note of their effect on us is just as important so we recognize when they’re beneficial and when we need to take things into our own hands.