Let's go for a Walk Man.

Is 31 old?  Here is the scenario - I start every class with a trivia question for my students each day, something to get them excited about being in math class, and the answer is always a number so that it is relevant to the subject that I teach.  Today's question - What year was the Sony Walkman invented?

Here is the student's reply - What is a walkman?

Oh man, I am old, students today do not have a clue what this device is and why we would ever have to use it... Worse, the teacher I work with, a half a decade younger than I, responded - It played CD's... err wrong - that was a Discman, early 20's people - us 30 year olds first had a thing called a Walkman, it played cassettes, it was amazing, and it came out pre-Discman...  Try explaining a cassette to a 15-year old, it's awesome- it will probably be like me trying to explain a CD to my son in 10 years.


But then it continued to get worse... the answer to the trivia question... 1980!  That was the year I was born.  Something the same age as me, is irrelevant - that is scary. 

I discussed this issue with my friend Sean over a few drinks on a Friday evening, not night, evening, before heading home before 10 p.m. - yes another sign of getting old... and we talked about the stereo systems our fathers had, that would take up an entire wall unit, be connected through dozens of wires, to two giant speakers.  Now kids wear a clip the size of a pinky on their pocket and listen to whatever song they want with the touch of a finger, through big giant purple headphones.  What the heck is going on?  How did this all happen so fast.

31 is not that old - the world is just moving too fast - I mean I got upset the other day when I was watching a football game in my basement and it wasn't in HD?  Who am I?  I used to have a TV in my basement with a huge seat shaped thing that came out in the front with red, yellow, and green lights that shined off a mirror and onto the TV screen - and I was fine with that, now I complain that my eyes hurt, its not in HD, waaah.

So my students don't know what a Walkman is, big deal, they can just google it and find out from wikipedia that it is a device that played audio cassettes, and since the word cassettes is in blue they can than click on that since they have no idea what that is and find out that a cassette is a magnetic tape sound recording format popular in the 1970's and if that doesn't satisfy their search they can click on magnetic tape and discover that it was created in Germany and used to record and play back audio... I mean that took me all of 5 seconds.

Life is fast, people are running from place to place, everything moves so quick - I suggest we all relax and just go for a Walk Man.

Thanks for Listening to Lumpy