"Grampa, what was 2019 like?" asked one of the young 'uns hanging around. There were many present. Some were even teenagers. The year was 2059.
Grampa sat back and puffed a great plume of vape. He loved being asked about the past, and what it was like.
"Well, young people, it's hard to know where to start because there have been a lot of changes".
"Woo hoo!" cried seven year old Tara. "I'll bet! I took a trip back through the Virtual Reality Portal and explored your world some...."
What a precocious young woman. Wiser than her years. But then again, all the kids nowadays were. Gramps decided to cut her off.
"Now wait just a minute, young Tara. There's a big difference between virtual and actual. You might think you were seeing things the way they was, but you weren't. Programmers built that world and put things in it that you don't even know about or how they worked and you just assumed that that was the way it was. It wasn't exactly like that. If I know human nature, ‘n I think I do, I'll bet they fudged on the details some. Anyhow, try as they will, they can't duplicate what it was like to be physically there 'cuz bein' physical you experience sensations. Cold. Heat. Wind in your hair. Things like that.
Let me give you some examples. Back in the good old days, before self drivin' cars, we used to drive cars our own selves!"
"Wasn't that super dangerous?" piped up young Jennifer, wide-eyed and holding onto every word.
"Yes it was! It was crazy dangerous! People drove cars past each other on two lane roads. There were things called traffic lights and road signs that told drivers what to do. But lots of people didn't follow the rules, bent 'em some, and sometimes there were horrible crashes. But still, 'sides that, drivin' was fun! Steering you own car around!
'n I'll tell you something else. We used to sit around at night and do something called 'watching TV'. We didn't join others on safari or ice climbin' or at rockin' house parties wearing virtual reality goggles, like kids nowadays use. TV was two dimensional. Anonymous. All we had, other ‘n that, was Alexa and Siri listening’ to us. It was a lot more relaxin'."
"Sounds boring" chimed surly teen Brad, from his seat in the way back.
"You kids are too hyped up these days" Gramps drawled, again pulling on his old school vape pipe and releasing a huge cloud. "Why, none of you even know how to cook"
"I can make toast!" little Stacy crowed.
"That's good that you know how to do that" Gramps acknowledged Stacy before continuing. "But for the rest of you, how many of you know the joy of making your own food?"
The kids all fidgeted, looking around at each other, but none offered up anything to Gramps.
"All that food drone delivery has spoiled ya! You call a number, the drone shows up and hovers right there at your door with Chinese or Mexican or Indian food, and you grab it like you're at a cafeteria or something"
"Grampa, what's a cafeteria?" sad-eyed Joey wanted to know.
"That was a place we went to in the old days where the food was already prepared for us. We walked down past the food that was on display under things called heat lamps, or food that was sitting in ice baths, and took what we wanted. We'd place the food on our trays and pay for what we had chosen to the cashier at the end of the line"
"What's a cashier?" Tommy wanted to know.
Lucre- lots of it but nowhere near a billion.
Jonny McKenna- Unsplash.com
"Cashier's handled cash. Money"
"Paper money, like they have in the museum?"
"Yep. That very same. I know you don't know what that felt like, to handle paper money, but it was a good feeling back in the day. Money wasn't all digital then. There were no blockchain currencies. You could hold money right in your hand. Feel it. Smell it, even, if it was freshly printed. I loved the smell of fresh greenbacks, which was what we used to call individual notes"
Gramps continued. "Why, back then they even had things called Billionaires. People that had so many greenbacks that they added up to a billion or more"
"Must have been before the Billionaire Ban of 2027" jibed studious Laurel, from her seat right in the very front.
"Yes" Gramps sighed. "I guess you kids don't think that unbridled greed was a good thing"
"Yuk!" blurted Jimmie, at even the thought of it.
"But back then, everybody was greedy! Couldn't get enough of anything! It was okay to want and want and want, even if you had all that you could ever need"
"What was so 'good' about that?" Jason asked, puzzled.
"People weren't telepathic so much back then. Their thought fields were more contained. It's hard to describe. Greed was sort of like a secret thing. Manipulation and trickery were skills that people developed to get more, and then even more, once they figured out how to do it. Whole schools of thought were developed to influence people to get them to act in ways that benefited just you! There was great satisfaction to be had in outfoxing the others"
"Did you feel good about 'greed', Grampa?" Edwin asked, while searching Gramps' eyes, as only a kid can.
"Oh yeah, I did! It felt good to be smarter than the average bear. But, I have to say, there was a downside. I experienced pangs of guilt after a while. But enough of that! We're talking about the Good Old Days here"
"What was 'work' like, Grampa?" Zach just had to ask. Gramps eyes narrowed for a bit, but then brightened. Those days, thankfully, were past.
"Well kids, let me tell ya. Back before robots took over, doin' every damn thing for ya, people used to have to hold things called 'jobs'. Most people, I certainly was one of 'em, didn't like to have to go to work, because of the greed thing I mentioned earlier. But that's just the way things were. We didn't know any different!
The thing about jobs was it forced us to do tasks with other people, and probably the kind of people that we wouldn't have crossed paths with otherwise in a million years. Now I know that sounds like an exaggeration, but it's true. We were so different from each other. But people being naturally lazy, most of us found ways to get along, and that lightened our individual loads. We learned a lot along the way. You kids......" Gramps trailed off for a bit. Obviously, this is something he had given a lot of thought to. He seemed to be searching for the right words.
"You kids... .....are facing a four hour workweek, which ain't nothin! Society asks you to contribute just that little bit. The rest of your lives is gonna be play. I don't know if that's gonna be as good for ya, but I'd hate to see you have to spend your time doin' something you don't wanna be doing any more than that. You might think four hours a week is a lot, but the workweek used to be forty hours long. Can any of you imagine that?"
Blank stares all around.
"So much has changed, and will continue to change" Gramps was summing things up, 'cuz kids bein' kids, they were starting to get restless. "I know you want to get back to your gaming, and some of you got to catch drone taxis to soccer practice and whatnot, so even though I could talk all day you ain't got the attention spans for it. There'll be another time. Now go. Git! All o' ya!"
The kids got up and more or less quickly scattered, leaving Gramps alone in his easy chair. He stared out the window at the drone food and package delivery contraptions flying by, at the lawn mowing robot in the neighbor's yard, and thought about what he might do the rest of the day. There were entertainment options galore. Once the aliens had landed, here and there, around 2036, feeling it was safe to do so because the funding for wars had completely dried up, peace and abundance had ruled the land and that had took some getting used to. In fact, it was still unsettling to Gramps to not have any News to read, the 'news' being mostly good nowadays instead of the other way around. He was still wary, which the kids weren't, waiting for the other shoe to drop, as the saying used to go, but after a couple of decades the other shoe hadn't dropped and probably wouldn't anymore.
"Maybe" mused Gramps, "the 'Good Old Days'......
......really hadn't been so good".