Olden Times

Whether it's because I am getting older or because I have been thinking more about my mother's younger days, aspects of the "good old days" have been creeping up on me a lot lately. Yesterday I was mourning the loss of coin rollers. Actually, I have many of these, but it isn't even that they aren't necessary anymore; bank tellers are annoyed if you take in rolls of change, and I find that unfortunate. I always enjoyed saving my coins, rolling them up, and taking them to the bank to exchange for crisp new bills. I would really like to do this with my older granddaughter. Maybe I will risk the wrath of the tellers and go for it.

Today I was remembering that when I was very young my mother used to take our laundry to someone to be washed, dried, folded, and -- for those items that required it -- ironed. This seems like a tremendous extravagance to me. Certainly we were not wealthy, and we had a washer and dryer, so I'm not sure what that was all about. My mom didn't have a job outside the home and I can't imagine that our house required so much maintenance that she didn't have time to do the laundry. And as I recall, she took the laundry to a person at least one town over. It seems that in the amount of time it took to drop it off and pick it up, the clothes could have been done. Funny that I forgot about that for all those years, probably at least forty-five, and now the memory is so clear.

I often think about how easy it is for kids (and adults) to find entertainment now, compared to how we had to make our own fun when we were little. I'm not saying one way is better than the other, only that they're different -- and it makes me feel old just to say that! Simple things like playing cards, dialing a phone, and many other formerly commonplace activities (that aren't immediately coming to mind at the moment) I think about and realize my grandchildren will never see and will have a hard time understanding even if I try to explain them, as I occasionally have. I wish I could remember what it was I tried to tell my youngest son about recently and had a really hard time making clear, and it didn't even seem to me when I mentioned it to be all that old-fashioned. I guess both my lack of remembering and my not seeing it as old-fashioned are striking indicators that my own young years were, in fact, olden times.