Of course I remember life before the internet. I was born in 1982 and adhere very strongly to being both Gen-X and a Millennial – as my title says, a “Xennial.” So yeah. I’m old.

I remember playing outside all the time: enacting whatever fantasies my brain could think up, swimming in clear creeks and dirty cow ponds, climbing through the barb-wire fence into the southern neighbors property to traverse their expansive maze-like paths, going even further to the Swing Tree (pretty sure it was a huge birch?!), whose branches expanded over a pond and the ground. My brother and I walked the mile north along the 2-lane highway and dirt side roads to get to our friend’s houses – all of these things without an adult.

One of my fondest memories is when my best friend was over and we danced in our undies in the rain while the sun was still shining. It was such a surreal thing to have sun and rain, but it was glorious.

The Transition into Technologia:

I played Pong on an Atari at a friend’s house. We owned an original Nintendo with 2 games – Mario/Duck Hunt and Tetris. Our first “PC” had a green screen with MSDOS to access EITHER the word program or the single game (can’t even remember what it was called, but it was simple AF), it also took a legit “floppy” disk (yeah, the very same icon you click in most cases to “save” a thing). And? We had a CORDED phone on the wall.

Our next desktop computer had Windows 95 and we used AOL CD’s to access the dial-up internet (heh, sounds like a dying robot?). I used ICQ (instant messaging) and online chat-rooms (lmao, can’t believe I remember my username – “ice_queen_sage”). I also remember meeting a boy in Alaska and giving him our home phone number so we could talk… long distance calls back then were expensive AF, though. I got caught, eventually. We won’t go into that, though. 😛

When I went off to college, I got my first cell phone – one of those famous Nokia BRICKS. Analog, with the “snake” game. Back when text messages were 10 cents each. Lordt.

As the years passed and technology got more and more intricate, I can remember owning a Razr flip phone, Blackberry, iPhones… and here we are now, firmly set in place with my Samsung Galaxy Android phone. It’s amazing how it technology has evolved in my lifetime.

Anyway, I have to get ready for a video call with my psychiatrist (fascinating) and I haven’t even had coffee yet…