Dinosaur things: dying things
Recently, my fiancee and I were invited to dinner with a friendly couple. Let's call them Paul and Paula for privacy reasons. It was a mild Saturday night, we were sitting on the terrace and had just dropped the dessert when the twelve-year-old daughter of Paul and Paula came home. "Hi Jule, such a bad luck," I greeted her, "you've really missed something." She gave me that special look that evolution has reserved for twelve-year-old girls: a mixture of childish curiosity and adolescent coolness.
"Oh no," she countered, "have you already danced on the table? I smiled. No, much better. Your mom made the best band salad of all time for us.? With my hand I made circular movements on my stomach and winked at Paula. Jules eyes grew bigger. She looked questioningly at her mother and moaned: "Tape salad? Do not you leave me nothing? It twitched in Paula's mouth, but she remained serious. "No honey, I thought you wanted to have dinner with the Vishnevskis." Oh mano? Jule burst out? I wanted to try.? To cut short the story: It was followed by laughter from the adults, explanatory words from me and a? Hahaha, are you funny. I'll throw myself right away? from Jule. She was then really fast away, urgently still whatsappen and so.
Later that evening, we sat with a glass of wine around the smoldering fire bowl, letting our conversations linger. Paula suddenly got such a nostalgic look, somehow turned inwards. "I always used a pencil?" She said abruptly. She noticed our questioning looks. "Well, to rewind the tape salad from the cassettes. Just put the tip in the hole and turn it. I had to think of my old Grundig tape recorder, a true master in the preparation of finest tape salad. Something like the kids of today, yes, no more, there are at most crashing music apps or halting YouTube videos with low Wi-Fi. ? Earlier was eh? everything better ?, I interjected, "two minutes ago, for example, my glass was still full." Paul grinned and wordlessly passed the bottle over the fire bowl.
"No, it was not better," my fiancé said. Just different? "I mean yes?" I replied. Actually, we almost always mean the same thing and find that pretty handy. Luckily, some things do not change. "Do you remember the movie recently, where the guy peppered his cell phone on the wall in anger," I asked her. ?What a waste. In the past, you would just pop up the phone. So tasty, that it rattles in the ear. But who else has a phone with a handset ?? I let the words work for a moment and continued: "Telephone books are no longer available. Or video recorder. And if you want to be looked at really stupid, then just ask a fifteen year old for the next telephone booth. Paul nodded. "Some things just die out," he mused. "And Google has killed the Brockhaus and the Duden. Digital double murder.? Everyone was silent.
Paula disappeared briefly in the house and returned with a writing pad and pen. "Let's write down everything that's already extinct or threatened with extinction, okay? So dinosaur things stop.? And that's exactly what we did. Before we went home much later, Paula made a copy of the list with her multifunctional printer that had been produced during the evening. "Shit," she said, "we forgot the copy shops? She quickly added the list by hand. Since then, our fridge has a list of threatened or extinct items I do not want to keep from you:
Dino things:
- Picture postcards
- paper Photos
- alarm clock
- vinyl records
- handwritten letters
- encyclopedias
- atlases
- music cassettes
- videotapes
- Landline phones
- newspapers
- Movie theaters
- phone booths
- Copy Shops
- ...
- ...
Whenever I get something out of the fridge (which unfortunately happens more often), I take a quick look at this list. In the meantime, I've come up with quite a few other dinodings that are not on the list. But on the evening with Paul and Paula we were already busy with the memories of the listed here until dawn. It was a bit nostalgic and beautiful at the same time. And in the end, the four of us agreed that this is what my fiancé said that evening: It was not better in the old days. But different.
Which dying things do you remember?
