Hey, y’all! It’s Bentley and I am doing today’s post as a birthday present for my mom. Today is not just the first day of spring, but it is also her happy birthday! She is really, really old. Seriously, in dog years, she would rival Methuselah! I thought it would be fun to turn the tables and interview her. I’m sure that she will be very excited to know that she can enjoy her day and leave the tough questions to me.
Bentley: “Happy birthday Mom. Are you comfortable? I know at your age it is important to keep you comfy, so you don’t get a cramp or stove up on me.”
Mom: “Thanks, Bentley. Yes, I am quite comfortable, no numbness, no craps, no worries. What kind of questions do you have for me?”
Bentley: “Simmer down, I’m not gonna go all Mike Wallace on you or anything. Let’s start with an easy one. I know you’re a dog person now, but did you have a pet dinosaur as a little girl?”
Mom: “Come on Bentley, dinosaurs weren’t roaming the earth when I was born. I’m not that old!”
Bentley: “Hmmm, interesting. How flabbergasted were you when you saw your first horseless carriage? You know, what we now know as a car. I’ll bet that freaked you out!”
Mom: “Let’s get something straight; cars were invented way before I was born. Exactly how old do you think I am today?”
Bentley: “Well, from the look of all those candles on your cake, you’re at least two or three hundred. When you light those babies, it is going to cause a three-alarm fire! I mean seriously, the top of your cake looks like a porcupine with all of those candles sticking out of it.”
Mom: “Why don’t you make sure the fire department is on speed dial? I’ll eat your piece of cake.”
Bentley: “Let’s not be too hasty on the cake. We still have some questions to go over. Is it true that you were in the theater when Lincoln was shot? I heard Pierre saying something about that. You’ll be happy to know that I quickly came to your defense. I told him that you were probably out in the lobby buying popcorn.”
Mom: “Bentley!”
Bentley: “Okay, I know that you probably bought your popcorn when you first went inside. I was just trying to have your back. Let’s talk about the internet back when you were a kid. Did you have our own laptop?
Mom: “Ummm, the internet hadn’t been invented when I was a kid.”
Bentley: “Oh, my bad! I forgot that you need electricity to use the internet. Did you have running water, an indoor toilet, and plenty of candles to read by in the dark?”
Mom: “Look, I was born after the invention of electricity and yes, I had running water and an indoor toilet. The internet hasn’t been around that long.”
Bentley: “I apologize for the mistake. How old were you when you got your first cell phone and flat screen television? Did you have a tv in your bedroom?”
Mom: “Sigh…cellphones weren’t invented. In fact, we had what was known as a rotary telephone and only three television stations no cable or satellite. We did get a colored television when I was still a kid. I remember the first time I saw the Wizard of Oz in color. It was amazing.”
Bentley: “Three channels…are you teasing me? Were you poor or something? I’ve seen that old-timey rotary phone in the front room. I couldn’t have used it cuz there is no way my paws would fit in those little circles. How did you program the phone numbers?”
Mom: “We had to actually dial all seven digits. It was grueling. We also had a party line. That means other people might be talking on the phone when we wanted to use it. We’d have to wait our turn. Telephones were attached to the wall by a cord too, so you couldn’t walk around and talk. Just for the record, nobody had more than three channels, unless you count the UHF channel. We had antennas on the televisions to get better reception and there were no television remotes. We had to actually get up and go over the television to change channels.”
Bentley: “Good grief. The pioneer days must have been tough. What about cooking? Did you have a microwave? I know you love your coffee, so did you have a Keurig and an espresso machine?”
Mom: “Dang it, none of those things had been invented yet. We had to bake our potatoes in the oven and it took an hour. Instead of a 3-minute microwave dinner, we sometimes had tv dinners that were cooked in the oven, too. It took about 30 minutes and they tasted like cardboard. I didn’t drink coffee back then, but we had a percolator. It took forever to make coffee.”
Bentley: “That sounds like torture. I bet you were grumpy without coffee! I’m surprised more people didn’t starve waiting for their food to cook. What did you do for fun? Did you have a ton of video games?”
Mom: “Video games weren’t around either. We played outside, rode bikes, read, and roller-skated. It was a much simpler time.”
Bentley: “It’s no wonder you played outside. I’m still hung up on that whole three-television channel thing. Do you have a bunch of photos of the olden days?”
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| This interviewing stuff is fun! |
Mom: “Yes, I have a lot of pictures, but the quality isn’t that great. When you took pictures, you had to turn them into a store so they could develop them. It usually took about a week to get them. If your picture was bad, you never knew until you paid for them and took them out of the envelope. You had to buy film to put in the camera, so you were limited to how many shots you could take. It was all pretty expensive. Digital photography has made capturing life so much easier.”
Bentley: “As many pictures as you and Dad take of us, you’d be up to your bifocals in debt! I’ll bet you are happy that you lived so long that they invented all of this cool stuff. How about traveling? Were you aboard the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria? You were scared that you were going to fall off the edge of the earth, weren’t you?
Mom: “Those were the ships Christopher Columbus used when he discovered America. Again, I am not that old!”
Bentley: “So you say, but that is still an awful lot of candles on your cake. Pierre and I tried to count them but we ran out of paw digits. We even used our back paws. Maybe we had better sing the Happy Birthday song before you start nodding off to sleep. I appreciate you sharing your memories of the by-gone days with us. I’ve always heard that the elderly had many stories to share. I’m glad that you made it out of the Stone Age intact. Happy Birthday, Mom, I love you.”
Mom: “Thanks, I think. I love you too!”
