Every generation thinks they have it figured out
We were riding down the road the other day when it occurred to us that Sutton will grow up vastly different than Greg or myself.
"Do you realize she will never have to get up to change the channel on the television?" I said. "Or know that at one time, people watched television in black and white?"
Still, there will be things Sutton will not get to experience and I don't know if her life will be better for it.
Sutton won't know what an eight-track or even a cassette tape or album is.
She won't know that at one time you had to choose between leaded and unleaded gas.
Her generation will never know - thank goodness - a car where your dad tucked the seat belts into the bottom of the car seat because they were in the way. Nor will she have a chance to ride in the back hatch of mom's station wagon.
Sutton's generation will be accustomed to dining out in nice restaurants, as opposed to the choices we had growing up, which were our own house, or, if it was a special day, Jack's Hamburgers.
Her generation won't know that at one time, television shows were all fictional and didn't involve rose ceremonies, Simon Cowell or anything even close to reality.
Her generation will never know the thrill of Saturday morning cartoons, now having entire television stations targeted at children.
Sutton will never get to see Bear Bryant coach an Alabama game or all four Beatles on one stage.
She probably won't know who John Wayne, Bette Davis or Johnny Carson are, unless she happens to catch some old show on late night television.
Sutton and her generation will drink bottled water and probably not stop on a hot summer day to drink a gulp from the hose pipe in the backyard. She won't drink Tang (like the astronauts do) or believe that strawberry Twinkies are classified as a fruit.
She will never know about shag carpeting or appliances of Harvest Gold and Avocado Green.
Instead, Sutton and her generation will carve their own way and create their own traditions. And one day, she will sit and tell her grandchildren, who probably will be vacationing on Mars, how things were much better back in the good old days, when kids enjoyed their I-Pods, My Space pages and cars that parallel parked themselves.
