Last week's Washington Post magazine section (which I finally got around to reading on Wednesday, suggesting what kind of week it's been) had an article on "209 once-common things that are either obsolete or well on the way." It's an interesting enough subject that I thought it was worth critiquing the article here. I'll start with the things they highlight in multi-paragraph articles, then touch on items they just list.
Truly "blind" dates. Yes, the internet has pretty much made that concept obsolete. Frankly, as far as I'm concerned, good riddance. Maybe your friends are more insightful than my ever were, but they tended to set me up with people on the grounds of silly things like "oh, you both play the piano." Not that googling somebody really tells you all that much more about what their priorities in life are (unless they keep an on-line journal or blog), but it's likely to make for learnng something interesting.
Mix tapes. I don't see that there's all that much difference between between a mix tape and a mix CD or an MP3 playlist. The physical mechanism may be different, but the concept of selecting a bunch of songs that go together in some interesting way is still a valid one.
Land lines I still have a land line (though, admittedly, I don't use it much and,, despite what the Post predicts, I don't expect voice mail to disappear all that quickly. I still have an answering machine, too. Pay phones are useful to overseas visitors, too, and I hope they don't disappear completely from transit terminals (e.g. bus and train stations and airports) completely. I am particularly fond of the ones at Penn Station in New York that let you call anywhere in the state for one minute (or maybe it's 30 seconds?) for a quarter. I can't count how many times I used them to say "hi, Mom, I'll be on the 8:19" and know that I had a ride home from the station.
Short basketball shorts. Frankly, I have no idea what basketball uniforms look like nowadays and I really don't care.
Doing nothing at the office. Their claim is that we retend to be busy using the internet so no longer hang out at water coolers and play with paper clips and so on. Whoever wrote this never set foot in my office. We have lots of random non-work-related conversations. And I can offer physical evidence that, as much time as I may waste web-surfing, I still have time to mangle paper clips.
Cigarettes. I wish. I'm glad that more and more places ban smoking, but I see no evidence that cigarettes are obsolete.
Phone sex. The claim is that this has been replaced by instant messaging and Second Life and so on. That doesn't seem an adequate replacement for the sensuality of the right voice, but I can't say I really know.
Getting lost. Uh, I managed to get lost twice this very day - once going to and once returning from the theatre where I saw Kiss of the Spider Woman. Going there, I didn't quite understand the directions for what I was supposed to do once I got off the freeway. Coming home, I was being clever and thought I had a faster way but didn't count on bad signage making me miss the exit I needed. (What is mildly embarrassing about this, is that I've been on the bus going through that exit about 600 times and still forgot that was where I needed to turn.) As for the idea that GPS would save me, I've been a passenger more than once as somebody managed to be unable to either program a destination into their GPS receiver or to succeed in following its directions.
Cash. I still use it. I even use bills besides 20s. It's the most convenient way to pay for small purchases. There are even still some stores left that don't take other forms of payment.
Body hair. The claim is that 3 out of 10 men ages 18 to 34 regularly remove hair from their bodies. No, no, no, no, no - say it ain't so. This is just wrong. There is nothing sexier than a nice thick pelt of chest hair on a man.
Having the blues. Uh, there's a difference between actual clinical depression and the sort of blue funk that has you "crying into your pillow while blaring Leonard Cohen." I think happiness is a great thing, mind you. But it doesn't have to be a 24/7 emotion. Though I do fear that my view is the minority one.
They just list a bunch of other things in various categories. In the work category, I will note that I still see bike messengers in the city. I'm not sure why one would want to preserve carbon paper, lickable stamps, the PalmPilot Graffiti alphabet, dot matrix printers, or printer paper with holes on the side. I still use a filofax equivalent (cheaper binder, but some pages are from filofax, some from other companies) and it includes my address book. It's faster to write down appointments there than it is to maintain computer calendars. I don't see secretaries as obsolete either - thank G-d Susie can deal with the travel folks for me, for example! And the phone tree is still a very handy way to get a hold of people in the event of an emergency.
In the music category, I'm surprised they list the tape deck as obsolete, but not the turntable (which has made a sort of comeback, I hear). I admit I still own both. I don't miss flicking lighters at a concert's end (not that I can remember ever doing that as it was a pretty brief fad) but I do miss record stores. There's nothing quite like a good array of listening stations to discover new music. On the other hand, I've made some pretty decent discoveries out of the array of music programming (from radio stations all over) out there on the net.
Beauty and fashion are inherently transient, so I don't see the point of mentioning things like tie tacks, teased hair, bolo ties (good riddance there, too), suspenders (er, I still see these fairly often), earmuffs, or stonewashed jeans. I still wear a wristwatch all the time as do most people I know. And I still use press-on nails from time to time, as they're far more convenient than actually having long nails.
I don't really see anything to argue with in their computers & the internet category, though I don't think many people ever wrote email with the formality of letters. As for the babies category, it's not one I can comment on except that I don't understand why it included rocking chairs. Which are also nowhere near obsolete, as anybody who has ever changed planes in Charlotte can attest to. (There's often a wait to use one of the rocking chairs in the terminal there.) Now, finding decent rocking chair pads which aren't some awful cutesy country-ish design has gotten pretty damn hard, but that's another matter.
In the kids & school category, I'm a bit saddened to learn of the disappearance of wall-mounted pencil sharpeners if that is actually true. Slide rules vanished so long ago that it's not really fair having them on this list as pretty much nobody more than a year or two younger than I am ever used one. Good penmanship was always overrated (says she who got her sole C's of elementary school in that subject). I have t look up "Trapper Keepers," which are pretty much after my time.
In the cars category, I can't say that I miss manual windows most of the time, though I suppose they'd be handy under some circumstances. Nor do I miss getting out of the car to open the garage door, cigarette lighters, or kicking the tires of a new car. (I never understood why anyone did that anyway.) The thing they don't mention which I actually do miss are those little side vent windows that disappeared years and years ago. They were perfect when you wanted just a bit of fresh air without it blowing all over the place.
Nothing in their food and dining category interested me much. As for travel, I still use film and have been known to send postcards. In-flight meals still exist on overseas flights and, oddly, so do plane tickets sent in the mail. (My trip to Cambodia later this year actually required paper tickets.) There are still travel agents, though they are more specialized now. Outside the developed world, one often still gets real hotel room keys. In fact, one may well get an actual padlock. And money belts are hardly obsolete at all but are, rather, a necessity in much of the world.
Th other categories were health & sanitation, home, sports & recreation, and going out. Among the things I think they're wrong about (i.e. that I still have and use) are stereo systems, analog clocks, and photo albums. I think that most Americans do still ignore the World Cup (though I haven't in many years, but I grew up in a household of soccer fans) and I suspect that people who ever found dates in bars still do.
The thing that's vanished that I miss most is, frankly, customer service. But that's the subject of an entirely different rant.
Copyright 2007 Miriam H. Nadel