Oh shoot, you people with your channels. I spent a few years on Eielson AFB in the 1970s as a kid, that’s north of Fairbanks Alaska, BTW. If the plane didn’t come in that week with the recordings, we got endless repeats of one episode of Colombo. (and in the winter that happened more than once).
Channels … pfui!
Not only did I grow up with only three TV channels, so did the rest of my generation in the UK. There simply weren’t any others. Channel 4’s launch in the Eighties was a Big Thing, believe me.
Oh, and to get all the schedules, you needed to buy two different magazines. The Radio Times listed BBC TV & Radio, while TV Times listed ITN/Channel 4 programming. That madness lasted until the early Nineties.
We got a little bit of variation here because for some reason the living room TV picked up ITV South, but when we eventually got a second TV for the dining room that picked up ITV West Midlands.
When my dad bought a really big aerial, we could (just about) pick up Tyne Tees as well as Yorkshire for the ITN channel. Occasionally, when a series was shown a week ahead on one channel, we could “predict” what would happen next to those who weren’t in the know.
Don’t have kids but worked around many Millennial / GenZ’s at my job before I retired in 2020. One day I was listening to Bowie’s song “Fame” and a kid ran over and said “I LOVE this song” and when I tried to discuss Bowie, I suddenly realized - he had no idea who David Bowie was, he just recognized the famous guitar riff from a sample in one of those modern “rapping” songs the kids seem to like so much.
I was struck how old I was when at the store I worked at before it closed I realized that I had gotten out of the US Army before the next oldest person working there was even born.
We got CBS, NBC and PBS pretty consistently, but our antenna had a hard time with ABC (channel 6). In the age of recording things off of TV with our VCR, it was almost always obvious when we recorded from ABC. 
I’m guessing/hoping there’s some irony and tongue in cheek there, but rap has been around long enough that the original rappers are of retirement age. At this point it would be like my grandparents in the 90s talking about the “rocking and rolling” songs the kids these days seem to like so much. (Which, to be clear, my dad’s dad totally would have done while blasting Glenn Miller at punishingly loud volume because he refused to get hearing aids.)
My wife teaches first and second grade. She’s been asked, in all seriousness, if there was electricity when she was growing up.
She’s also noticed that the “call me” hand sign has become holding your palm flat to the side of your face.
That’s just wrong. Does this mean no more banana phones?!
The phrase “hit me up” finally comes full circle.
Has she noticed that they all hold actual phones about six inches from their heads when they talk?
My son talking to his grandpa on the phone is the most infuriating thing I’ve ever been forced to watch.
I ruined it for her, but my daughter, until today, went a blissful 12 years without having heard of the term ‘Internet troll.’
Not that she’s mentioned, although she has done the “watch them try to figure out a rotary phone” thing. One of the black ones the phone company used to issue to everyone and they haven’t used in 40 years and I remember them growing up and oh God I’m old.
You had to ask the phone company if you wanted a different phone. Imagine people being expected to put up with that today.
I don’t see myself as old but then again I didn’t have a hard drive in a computer I owned until I was 13
Glorious allegedly portable PowerBook!
My first encounter with com-put-er, back in Mrs. Ryan’s room in Minoa Elementary.
I’ve spent way too much time trying to locate a picture of the first computer my family owned. Doesn’t help I can’t remember the make and model, just what it looked like. I suspect the company that made it is not only out of business, but that the corporate records are buried in the desert next to the ET game cartridges.
They actually dug those up! They have one in the video game exhibit at the Strong Museum of Play here in Rochester, NY.
