Is it just me, or has technology completely changed the definition of dating as we know it? When I think about the last 10 years and how things have changed, its interesting, but I when ! think about the differences in regards to technology I'm amazed!! ~~ Take a Journey with me if you will!! ~~
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Picture it, Indiana, the year 1996. I'm in Indianapolis at a Youth conference and I meet a very bright, very cute young man named Charles. I am at first attracted to him by way of his height (I am not a short girl, not then, not now), next by his sense of humor and again by his wit! We became instant friends and hung out non stop for a week straight. We exchanged phone numbers and addresses before going home.
Upon returning home, I unpacked my suitcase to find Charles' number only to retrieve a damp piece of paper of which looked to have had someone's information written on it sometime that may have been visible if my Tommy Hilfiger Perfume hadn't spilled all over it!! I was irate!! If he doesn't call...I'm screwed! And in that day in age, I had no more options.
Later that week, I checked the messages on the machine and there was Charles and that genius of a young man left his complete phone number in his message! I immediately ran out and bought a calling card and called him back. I also asked for his home address again so that I could write him. We have been friends ever since.
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Now back to reality...did you notice the major differences in that story and life today? Write a letter? Like stamp and place in a mailbox and wait.....? Yea right, not today. Buy a calling card? Are you serious, how about free long distance? Nights and weekends? And did you hear anything about emails? IMs? Nope, none of that... Now lets take another journey back into time, but not so far this time...
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Picture it, College, the year 2000. My freshman year. Before I leave to move into my new residence, a nice un-air conditioned dormitory on the fifth floor of a brick building who's elevator only stops on the first OR sixth floor, I look down at my hip at my trusty pager. God how I loved my pager. It had the best alerts, the coolest colors, and the best part is that the company had gone out of business yet neglected to disconnect it for the past 8 months or so. The bad news? This thing does not work in college town, no way. It was time to give it up. I glanced at my younger cousin who was already smirking at me, detached my only love from my hip and handed it to her. I told her " It may not have a bill, but that doesn't make it worthless. You better take care of it!" She grabbed it, did a little dance, hugged me and ran off. I felt completely naked and nauseous. In our dorm we had a phone, with a number, and an answering machine. Cool, i guess. But if we were out of the room there was no reaching us. I felt no real pain. By the time Christmas came and went that year, almost every student returned with a CELL PHONE!! If you were mobile come January 2001 you had your stuff together! And I did! I was among the elite rocking the celly with 60 minutes for the whole month and free calls on Saturday and Sunday!! Whoo Hoo!
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WHAT IN TAR NATION!??!?!?! 60 minutes for the whole month! Hahahahaaha! lol! That is pure comedy! I can talk 60 minutes in 5 minutes now-a-days! and Free calls on Saturday and Sundays? Well whoopidy doo! Felt no pain? My word! I would roll over and die a slow, horrible painful death if I had no cell phone...COME ON!! That is absolutely nothing at all to write home about. Unfortunately for me, college is where I truly discovered email, instant messaging, chat rooms, text messages and the like.
I remember in or around 2002 or 2003, you would never expect a call from a guy until after 9pm. Either they weren't trying to use their daytime minutes or you ignored the call in order not to use your own. What does this do to our dating standards? We used to have guidelines to call times regarding what was too late and what was too early, that was indeed a long time ago. So what this means is that once your call was received sometime after 9pm on a week night, you would not be seeing this gentlemen until sometime after that called was ended, 10pm, midnight, 2 o'clock in the morning!! My mother/grandmother would have never stood for that, but this is what we have been reduced too!
By 2003/04, in came the wave of text messaging. Texting has taken the world by storm and bumped out emailing quite a bit. People are ending relationships via text, fixing relationships via text, maybe even having relationships via text. Its a way to communicate without really communicating...and I love it!
More and more people are meeting, dating, getting married, breaking up and what have you, all online. Its probably so much easier than just walking outside and meeting an honest person, but it may be quite a bit more risky, well who knows? I say "Do You!"
There was a time you could give a man a fake number in the club, and he would be none the wiser. When he tried to call you the next evening and got the time and temperature, who cares! Try that crap today if you want to...He is going to put it in his cell, call it on the spot and see if your cell rings so that you can "have his number". Yea right, he was checking to see if you gave him fraudulent digits and now you're busted!! What a load of pumpernickel!! But it doesn't end there, nope. Once you give this extremely uninteresting man your correct number thinking "Its cool, I'll just send ol' Jethro to voicemail" your "plan" completely blows up your face. Its a cell phone! You're always available and accessible and he will just keep calling and calling leaving voicemail after voicemail complete with 50 of those "What Up!" text messages, all day long. That is until you talk to him, and tell him another lie "I'm married"...or something like that, whatever. Technology is way to stressful, it just may be forcing us to...tell the truth???
Noooo, now that would be a completely different technology all its own...
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