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This video from Conan made me pee in my pants laughing, and would have even if it weren’t for the whole minor incontinence issue (all the moms are going, “Uh-huh!” while all the non-moms are going “Eew.”)

In working on the technology portion of my book, I thought about some of the stuff Louis CK talks about. I’m a little nostalgic for all the now-obsolete gizmos that seemed so radically advanced back in the day, still not decomposed in some landfill somewhere. While most of us have gotten with the tech program through sheer exposure and necessity, there are definitely still some Formerlies out there who have the attitude, I got along just fine without a [FILL IN THE BLANK], so why do I need one now?

I actually think they’re right, for the most part. They don’t need a new whatever. I don’t, either. It’s just when everyone else is upgrading, pretty soon you have to or face your own personal obsolescence. I know an older woman only recently went over to the CD player because no one makes the correct needle for her turntable. I didn’t have the heart to tell her about MP3s. I read this item by this woman who hates her iPhone, and the comments were filled with such disdain for her! They practically called her a cave woman for preferring a BlackBerry. Insane.

Clearly I blog, so I’m not clinging to the past in terms of technology. I’ve moved beyond MSDOS. But I still resent getting pushed to upgrade or embrace an entirely new way of doing things just as I’m getting the hang of the old way.

Anyway, I want to hear about your most lustful technological desire growing up. Here’s mine:

What I wanted as a pre-teen more than anything was my own phone line, ideally a pink push-button princess phone in my bedroom. A push-button phone cost more than a rotary and my mother didn’t think that was a good use of our limited resources. She said something to the effect of, “Is it really so hard to dial the numbers when you have to make a call? That was hard to argue with, although I do remember thinking I’d be at a disadvantage for radio call-in contests (this was before redial).

She did eventually get me my own line, albeit with a standard white rotary phone, mostly because she was sick of people getting busy signals when they were trying to reach her (remember busy signals? Oooh, remember emergency breakthroughs, when a live, human operator interrupted your very important call to your best friend with whom you’d just spent seven hours at school to say your mother had dislocated her knee and was in the ER and could you please get off the line so she could tell you where there was money so you could order in your dinner? Sheesh.)

Do tell.

Photo by Urthstripe CC