The good old days
Elle recently got a new phone. She hasn’t gotten rid of the old one, yet, because it has some pictures on it that she wants to transfer, and maybe one or two other mysterious things she wants the phone for before she sends it off to get recycled. The phone – a flip phone with a shiny, plum-colored color to it – resides currently on our coffee table.
This morning at breakfast, Elle noticed a small booklet underneath the old phone. “What’s that little book?” she asked me, “the one under the phone?”
“That’s the instruction booklet for your Motorola,” I said. “I found it while I was cleaning out a drawer. I thought you might be able to use it, if you need help doing all that stuff you wanna do with the phone before you scrap it.”
She looked surprised. “Thanks. I can probably just look up what I need on the Internet.”
“Mm,” I said. Then there was a brief silence. “Is it old fashioned of me that, when you said that, I was thinking, ‘Why would you want to look it up on the Net when you have the book right there?’”
Elle laughed and drank her juice.
“And why was that funny?”
“Yes,” she said, patting my knee. “You’re very old fashioned, baby.”
It’s good to be old-fashioned once in a while. It can be comforting. Remembering how things used to be can help us appreciate more how they are today or, in some cases, cause us to wish they hadn’t changed.