Remember Napster?

I do.

Napster was a peer-to-peer file sharing program that was popular around the turn of the millennium, and enabled people to download music that would otherwise have to be purchased with their parents’ hard-earned money. To get around the troublesome copyright laws, Napster employed the ancient legal doctrine of “they can’t catch you all.”

I used Napster solely to share my own recordings of myself playing the spoons. I never even searched for copyrighted music. One of the greatest pleasures in my life at that time was working for hours as a bumper cars operator so that I would have the $20 to buy a CD and finding the one song that wasn’t terrible.

But not everyone shared my work ethic. At college, I had this friend who downloaded thousands of songs through Napster. He would go through genres – classic rock, 80s pop, the songs by the “Zack Attack” band from Saved by the Bell – and play the songs for his friends when they congregated in his room to buy Tupperware and sip fine wine from red plastic cups.

Using Napster was not without its challenges. My friend lived in a fraternity house, and the House Computer Nerd, an elected position at the time, told my friend that his downloading used up so much bandwidth that the rest of the brotherhood was having trouble playing Half-Life in real time. At the next meeting the brotherhood voted to excommunicate my friend from the router. Unable to find other housing with sufficient bandwidth, he dropped out of school and moved back home to his parents’ T-1 connection.

For a while my friend was able to live in download heaven. He was making his way through theme songs to cartoon programs when his parents got fed up with him leaving near-empty cartons of milk in the refrigerator, and turned him in to Metallica, a heavy metal band that specialized in intellectual property. At his subsequent trial my friend tried to mount a vigorous defense, but his lawyer spent the whole time downloading music instead of making objections, and my friend was sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in Siberia. I heard that he was later implicated in a snow-swapping scheme, and murdered by the people who owned the rights to the snow.

As for Napster, it was replaced by a competitor called Gnutella, which boasted faster transfer rates and could be spread on pizza dough.

Thanks to Jennifer Albright for the topic.

Posted on 28 March 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember Your First Answering Machine?

Remember your first answering machine?

I do.

In the days when I was still watching new episodes of Thundercats, if someone called and no one was home, or if someone was home but was in the shower and did not hear the phone ring, or if they did hear it ring but were afraid of getting electrocuted by picking up the phone with a wet hand, then the phone just rang and rang until the caller got tired of hearing the phone ring and went off to do something more productive with his or her life.

Close your eyes for a moment and try to imagine what it was like not being able to record a message with your voice on it. Imagine the inconvenience. Imagine the missed opportunities. Imagine the bliss.

Answering machines were marketed upon the assumption that you wanted to receive telephone calls. But not all calls are wanted. If you don’t pick up your phone and the caller leaves a message, you have no recourse. When you don’t return the call or do what was asked, the caller can say, “Well, what you mean you didn’t return the 500 fake birds and tree branches we ordered for my baby shower? I left you a message.” You can run, but you can’t hide.

Before answering machines, however, you could let the phone ring, and ring and ring and ring, and with each ring sense that the caller was getting tired, like a boxer hanging against the ropes in the tenth round, and would eventually go away. And when the phone stopped ringing, that was it. You could continue watching the Flintstones Meet the Jetsons or whatever, safely insulated from any constructive knowledge that you were supposed to call someone back or perhaps even do something for someone.

And then one day it all ended. They invented these machines upon which you would record a message. I remember my band director’s answering machine played a steel drum band version of the theme from “Peanuts” that I heard about fifteen times when I tried to tell him that I was going to miss the Memorial Day parade because my cat was stuck behind the dryer.

My father’s greeting was robot-style. “I can’t come to the phone right now, but please leave your name, tel-e-phone number, and brief mes-sage after the tone. Here is the tone.” And true to his word there would be a tone.

My grandparents called leaving messages “talking into the machine” and they would shout into it as if the answering machine was hard of hearing, just like all of their neighbors at Westwood 21 in Ft. Lauderdale.

People today are so used to leaving messages that they speak onto the digital medium just as if they were talking to me in person. That is why I have no trouble ignoring them.

Thanks to Maria for the topic. She does a great treatment of it here.

Posted on 11 March 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember Audio Cassette Tapes?

Remember when people listened to music on cassette tapes?

I do.

The first cassette tape I ever bought was the album Appetite For Destruction by Guns ‘N’ Roses. I had never heard their music. But my friend said the band was cool and I did whatever my friends told me. After a few weeks of saving my allowance, the plastic Hess truck finally had the eight dollars I needed to buy the album in that innocent time when recorded profanity had to be bought in person.

I barely had the tape out of the cellophane when I realized that my family’s sole cassette player belonged to my father, and that this cassette player was in his car. Driving myself was not an option, as I had poor motor skills and was in the fifth grade. Listening to tunes like “Nightrain” (Wake up late/Honey put on your clothes/And take your credit card/To the liquor store), “My Michelle” (Your Daddy works in porno/Now that Mommy’s not around/She used to love her heroin/But now she’s underground), and “It’s So Easy” (Cars are crashin’ every night/I drink and drive/Everything in sight) with my father in the car next to me was a little uncomfortable at first, but soon he was whistling along just like he did to Roy Orbison.

One of the things I remember most about cassettes was making mix tapes. A mix tape was a recording of assorted songs on a blank tape, usually of different artists, and frequently made for a member of the opposite sex, or, if you were me, made just for yourself. The main character in the film High Fidelity lists a number of rules for making mix tapes. I, however, had only one rule: Arrange the songs so that I would not have to flip over the tape in the middle of a song.

With only this one rule to obey, the mood of my mix tapes was a little erratic. For example, one of my mixes started out with “Dead Souls” by Nine Inch Nails, then “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, then Metallica’s “Blackened,” and then “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper. Another one of my mix tapes opened with “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees, then the main theme from “The Marriage of Figaro” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, then jumped to “Hammer Smashed Face” by Cannibal Corpse, and finally “V’Shomru” by Cantor Joseph Kanefsky. That mix was for my grandmother.

The other thing that stands out in my memory about cassettes was how they would get caught in the spokes of the tape player. I’d be pacing back and forth across the campus green, listening to The White Album over and over again instead of doing my Spanish homework, when all of a sudden Paul McCartney’s vocals on “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road” would be replaced by a loud crunching sound, and then there would be no sound but my own profanity.

Oh the humanity! I felt as if it were my arm that had been caught in the spokes, although because of the size difference only the end of my sleeve would get wound up. Try as I might to unwind the tangled tape and restore my beloved music, it almost never worked again, and even when it did the tape never sounded right. On some of the tracks it sounded like Paul was just screaming.

I no longer use cassette tapes, and even my compact discs are being featured on Antiques Roadshow. I now carry thousands of songs on my telephone. It takes seconds to arrange them in a mix, and I don’t have to flip over the phone unless I feel like drawing attention to myself. The only thing missing is the sound of cassette tape getting mauled by tape player spokes.

But I’m sure they’ve got an app for that.

Thanks to Jessica Buttram and Maria for the topic.

Posted on 9 March 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember Writing With Pen and Paper?

Remember when people wrote things down on paper instead of typing into a cell phone?

I do.

Throughout much of my life I have carried around a little notebook to record my thoughts, make grocery lists, and calculate how many degrees from Kevin Bacon my family members and I are removed. Sometimes I have used an inexpensive spiral notepad from the drugstore. Other times I have used the fancy schmancy leather-bound notebooks with the attached elastic band, used by great artists such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, and “Wendy” the Snapple Lady. The only criteria for my notebook was that it was easy to carry in my pocket and could double as a wedge to prop up a rickety table.

In my experience, being at a social gathering and taking out a little notebook and writing in it is kind of like setting yourself on fire. It tends to get attention.

“Are you writing about me?” my friend asks.

I assure him that I am not writing about him.

“I don’t believe you,” he says. “I want to know what you are writing. Let me see.”

I assure him, again, that I am not writing about him and that he cannot see my notebook. I say this because my work is private. I say this also because I have written things about him. To be careful, I close the notebook and focus my attention on the South Park rerun we’re all watching.

A few moments later I feel a tugging at my pocket. I turn and it is the same friend trying to pull the notebook out of my pocket. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“I want to see what you’re writing about me.”

“You’ll never see what I’m writing about you. And I’m not writing anything about you.”

I get up and move to another part of the room. Although standing in the closet might be considered a bit strange, I figure that this is the only way I can write unmolested. Unfortunately, there is no light in the closet so I must make my best guess as to how to form the letters on the page. Soon there is a knock at the door.

“Yes?” I reply, scribbling in the dark.

“What are y0u doing in there?” asks my curious friend.

“I’m doing research on coats of North America. There are some interesting specimens in here.” I rattle some coat hangers to support my story.

“Are you writing in there?”

“No. Why would I do that?”

“I want to know what you’re writing about me.”

It suddenly occurs to me that if I had been typing on a cell phone instead of writing with a pen and paper, no one would have said anything. They would have thought I was just being rude by texting instead of being rude by writing. I feel like I’m going to get sent to the Gulag if I don’t change my act. When my friend opens the door I have my notebook pressed against my ear as if it is a cell phone, and I’m talking into it. “Mm hm. Okay. Sounds good. Let’s circle back sometime next week.” My friend looks confused and closes the door. I keep talking for a few more minutes so that my ruse is not exposed.

A month ago I bought one of those cell phones that is basically like a hand-held computer. Now, whenever I want to take notes I can pretend I’m just texting or emailing or searching for videos of street fights between Mets fans and Yankees fans.

“What are you writing?” my friend asks me while I’m writing on my cell phone.

“Nothing,” I say. “I’m just texting or something.”

“You can’t fool me. The screen is lighting up your face. I want to know what you’re writing.”

Alas, the technology change has not worked. There is nothing I can do to hide my compulsion to take note of the world around me. But I will never tell him or anyone else what I’m writing. That is for me and me alone. And whoever reads my blog.

Thanks to Chris Calabrese for the topic.

Posted on 8 February 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When You Could Not Instantly Settle Arguments on the Internet?

Remember when people couldn’t instantly settle arguments on the Internet?

I do.

Sometime during the 90s, when my friends and I had started to resemble adults, I got into a disagreement with a close associate of mine, whom I will call X. The nature of my disagreement with X related to Jambi, a character on the award-winning television program Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Jambi was a disembodied head floating inside a bejeweled box in the corner of the Playhouse. X and I disagreed over the color of Jambi’s skin.

I said, “Jambi is blue.”

X said, “Jambi is green.”

Thus we disagreed, even wagering $5 on the outcome. Had our dispute arisen just five years later we could have resolved it instantly with a search on Google, the same way we would later resolve disputes over song lyrics or whether whales have penises. But at the time we had no way of quickly resolving the issue. Pee Wee’s Playhouse had been canceled a few years earlier, and I had not thought of taping it. Not that I would have known how to work the VCR anyway.

Although X and I remained cordial to each other, the disagreement simmered. Our mutual friends were compelled to take sides. After a while I would get invited to things only after it was assured that X would not be there. Sometimes one of us would be arriving while the other was leaving and it would be awkward. People begged us to reconcile. But I was adamant. I knew Jambi was blue, just as Neo from The Matrix knew he was the One. I just knew.

And then one day X invited me to his house. I figured he wanted to make up and serve up some of his famous iced tea – an old family recipe that called for six times the legal limit of iced tea mix. I walked in his door and he greeted me not with iced tea but with a remote control and a smirk. He pressed a button and Jambi appeared on the TV. And the Jambi on the screen was undisputedly green.

X was triumphant. “See? Jambi is green. Now pay up.”

I handed over a five-spot and began the long walk home. I thought that there was something very unsettling about what I’d seen. The show on the screen was definitely Pee Wee’s Playhouse, but it seemed just a little different from the one on TV that I’d watched every Saturday morning for a year. Perhaps I was just sore from losing money. I would have to accept defeat gracefully.

Years passed. I went to college and forgot about the Jambi wager. Then I graduated and went to work. By this time Google had been invented and I had gotten into the habit of searching for random things on the Internet when no one was looking. Finally it occurred to me to search for Jambi. And lo and behold, the Jambi that Google revealed was blue. Blue! And as I scrolled down to find less common results I discovered why I had lost that bet. The tape that X had showed me was of the HBO special, done live on a stage, where Jambi was green. But on the TV show, Jambi was blue. I was right. Well, maybe we were both right. But I was more right. I wanted to call up X and tell him. I wanted to gloat and feel vindicated. I wanted my five dollars back with interest compounded monthly.

But when I did see X and told him my big news, he just shrugged his shoulders. He would not give me any satisfaction. There would be no gloating, no vindication. Just lost years and a lost five-spot.

All because there had been no Internet to instantly settle our dispute.

Posted on 3 February 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When Cameras Used Film?

Remember when you had to put film in a camera to take pictures?

I do.

My first camera was plastic and gray and flat and had a picture of the Go-Bots emblazoned on the top. The Go-Bots were fictional cartoon robots that were like a poor man’s Transformers and had nothing to do with the camera’s functioning.

My Go-Bots camera, like all cameras at the time, required film to take pictures. The film was rolled up inside of a cartridge and contained a limited number of pictures. The number of pictures ranged from 12 to perhaps 48 at the outer limits. There were no film cartridges that took 500 pictures, at least not at the film kiosks where I was getting ripped off.

The film cartridge that my camera required was in the shape of two small tubes connected by a flat plastic piece. It looked like a little Torah scroll. Taking a flash picture required buying a cartridge of flash bulbs, which looked like a miniature apartment building made of clear plastic.

One memory of using my Go-Bots camera stands above all others. In 1989 my parents took me to see the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan. I was not old enough to drink heavily so I really felt the cold. The only thing that kept me from landing on Planet Whine was my Go-Bots camera and the promise it held for me of a Pulitzer Prize.

The problem was that my allowance afforded me only one roll of 27-shot film. Even were there exactly 27 floats—and there were far more than that—I would have no chance to take different angles of a float I found particularly compelling. So I would have to choose. I could not take pictures of everything.

For each float that approached I employed a three-pronged analysis. First, how many pictures do I have left? Second, is this better than what I have already seen? And third, given how many floats are likely to come by, is this particular float picture-worthy? Some things, like the many marching bands that went marching by, were easy to pass up…unless there was something unique about it, like a particularly corpulent trumpeter. Other things, however, were closer calls.

One such close call was a float of friendly dinosaurs in various colors. “How cool,” I said to myself. “I simply must preserve these dinosaurs.” And there went 1/27^th of my film.

I regretted my decision as soon as the shutter closed. Not even a giant blown-up Woody Woodpecker could free my mind from my bad decision. “Why did I waste a picture on those stupid dinosaurs?” I asked myself. “The dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. Those were probably just people dressed up in dinosaur costumes.”

Still unable to accept my own mistake, I started taking pictures of things that were even less picture-worthy than the people dressed up as dinosaurs, as if to show the cosmos that my original decision was correct. I wasted irreplaceable shots on blown-up cartoon characters that did not have their own show, washed-up celebrities whose last work had been when I was an embryo, and a funnel-cake that someone had obviously found disappointing and thrown in the gutter. The funnel cake had been stepped on, but I could not even tell if the person who had bought the funnel cake was the same person who had stepped on it.

I was still in denial when the grand finale float approached. The float that we were all waiting for. The float that bridged an okay holiday to the only holiday that kids actually cared about. The shouts of children and adults alike presaged the appearance of that greatest of floats…Santa! Mommy, I see him! It’s Santa! Santa! Santa!!

It is a well-known fact that Santa Claus is the final float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. That meant I had made it on my one roll of film. Just one more picture and all my mistakes would be forgiven. But when I pressed on the picture-taking button I got nothing. I was out of pictures. My hubris had cost me a picture of the most important float. I had blundered at the critical moment. During the long, long car ride home I kept replaying the events in my mind. A hundred times I saved myself from clicking a picture of the dinosaurs and took pictures of Santa from many angles.

That would never happen today. Had the year been 2009 instead of 1989 I would have had a digital camera with a 300 gigabyte SD flash whatever and could have taken as many pictures as I wanted, of anything, and still had plenty left over for the Big S. I could have deleted those pictures of the dinosaurs the moment I realized I did not want them.

I now have a digital camera, and I have used that digital camera to take thousands of pictures, pictures that, along with the ones I took on film with my Go-Bots camera, allow me to relive the moments of my life, good and bad, happy and sad, again and again for as long as I live. Pictures that I have not looked at once since I took them.

Thanks to Carly Kulig for the topic.

Posted on 19 January 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember Non-Electric Toothbrushes?

Remember when no one used electric toothbrushes?

I do.

I am sure that someone can cite me an article that says that electric toothbrushes have been around since the Roman Empire. But it was not until I was at least old enough to bear sole responsibility for brushing my teeth that I first heard of the electric toothbrush.

I never liked brushing my teeth. It seemed like a lot of extra work, and at eight years old I could not be wasting time with needless personal hygiene. My parents told me that my teeth would rot and fall out if I did not brush them regularly, but I debunked that myth whenever I could.

And then one day I saw a commercial for an electric toothbrush. I could not believe my eyes. A man was standing in front of the camera and was holding this electric toothbrush in front of his teeth. His arm was not moving; the toothbrush was doing all the work. This was the answer.

I persuaded my parents to splurge for a electric toothbrush by making up statistics and saying “please” many times in a row. On the first night of Hanukkah I opened my gift and it was an electric toothbrush. It was small, with the brush on one end and a Mickey Mouse figurine on the other end, satisfying the universal law that any appliance designed for children must have a superfluous plastic cartoon figurine welded to it. The electric toothbrush my brother received had a Donald Duck figurine so that he would not use mine by accident.

I popped in a battery, and, for the first time in my life, raced up the stairs to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I put the toothpaste on the brush, and held the brush to my teeth, said a quick prayer, and flipped on the device.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Perhaps I thought the brush would clean my teeth without my so much as flexing a wrist. The brush vibrated next to my teeth for a few moments, but it was not really brushing them. I took the toothbrush away and saw that I had only gotten some white toothpaste lather on my front teeth. “Ah,” I said to myself, “perhaps I have to move the brush around.” I moved the vibrating brush around my teeth, but I still did not feel like the teeth were getting clean. After another minute I was moving my arm in a brushing motion, and was basically brushing my teeth as I normally would but with a vibrating brush head. After a few days I returned to my old brush, and the Mickey Mouse figurine sat idle on the counter with dried white toothpaste on his mouse ears.

Years later, just after a marathon cleaning session at the dentist’s, during which I heard the hygienist retching into the wastebasket several times, my dentist advised me to get an electric toothbrush. I followed these instructions and duly parted with $80 or so for the recommended fancy state-of-the-art toothbrush. It came in a large box, and had charging station instead of a space for a battery, and had nothing in place of the Mickey Mouse figurine. I charged it up, put it up to the front of my teeth, said a prayer, and flipped on the device.

I guess I should have known what to expect. It vibrated, and my teeth did not get clean, and I found myself applying the usual amount of torque from my elbow and shoulder. And after a few days the electric toothbrush was lying idle on the counter, with dried white toothpaste collected all over the charging station.

And so every morning when I get up, and almost every night before I go to bed, there I stand, in front of my mirror, in a world of iPhones and Tivos, brushing my teeth with nothing but the sweat of my shoulder and elbow, and my ergonomically-handled, aerodynamically-headed, uniquely-bristled, plain ol’ non-electric toothbrush, that I picked up for $80 or so.

Thanks to Curtis Dozier for the topic.

Posted on 12 January 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When People Shoveled Their Driveways With Shovels?

Remember when people shoveled their driveways with shovels?

I do.

The only thing that could damper the ecstasy of a snow day was having to shovel the driveway. “I don’t understand,” I would say while pulling on my boots. “Why can’t they just invent a heated driveway that melts the snow?”

“Boy, you kids today have it so tough,” my mother would say. “When I was your age my father made me shovel the driveway with a dirt shovel. He would say, ‘What do we need another shovel for?’ I hope this puts things in perspective for you while you’re out there.”

And out I would go into the sunlight blazing off the snow I had to clear. Shoveling one shovel-full and then hoisting it over my back would quickly cause aches and pains in my young back. I always imagined that if I could just find the right technique the job would get done in seconds. So I would try putting the shovel down and plowing through, like the snow plow going down the street. I marveled at my ingenuity and pictured myself alongside the likes of the inventors of the steam engine and the cotton gin. Then the snow would build up and spill over the sides of the shovel and the driveway would look like a mess and my fantasy would be ruined. Sometimes I would try to get away with this.

“Mom,” I would shout up the stairs as I walked inside, stomping the snow off my boots, “I’m done! Is my oatmeal still warm?” But she would look out the window and see that I’d left a mess of the driveway, with my snow-plow imitation, and order me outside to clean it up.

I still shovel my driveway with a shovel today. And by “today” I really mean today, as in this morning. I still do my snow-plow imitation (complete with snow-plow noises), thinking I’ll save time and back pain. But when the snow spills over the sides of the shovel and makes a mess, I don’t just walk inside and pretend I’m done. I stay outside to finish the job. Just a part of growing up.

After I’ve been out there over an hour, and ice has formed from the sweat in the flaps of my bomber hat, I start to hear voices – voices telling me that if I’d bought a snowblower during that end-of-winter sale last July, I would be inside by now, in my Snuggie, eating warm oatmeal in front of the television, watching the real housewives of various U.S. regions, instead of outside in the cold. I should have listened, I say to myself.

And I look across the street to a driveway that still has an unblemished coverlet of snow on it, where my neighbor has been for over an hour, kneeling before his snowblower, trying to get it to work.

Posted on 9 January 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When We Did Not Have To Remember A Million Passwords?

Remember when we did not have to remember a million passwords?

I do.

The first piece of datum that I had to remember was probably my name. I distinctly remember not knowing how to spell my last name. I was in nursery school, and the task at hand was to draw a picture of your family members – evidently with arms coming of their heads – and sign it on the back. The drawing was no problem but I had to ask my teacher how to spell my last name. I would have been embarrassed were it not for that little “accident” the previous week.

In Kindergarten a phone number was added to the name. It was only seven digits and I used it frequently over the ensuing years to get my parents to pick me up from people’s houses. Add my birthday and the channels for Nickelodeon, MTV, and whatever channel showed “Growing Pains” and you’ve rounded my mental database for elementary school.

When I got to middle school a locker combination was added to the set. I entered this number with such frequency that after a while I did not even see the numbers anymore, and entered the combination by feeling the clicks like a bat or one of those insects that sees through receptors in its knees.

Then in college everything changed. I was given an email account and asked to choose a password and my life since then has been one giant coveyor belt of passwords. A password for Windows accounts for home, and work, and for my co-workers when they are away from their desks. Email passwords for the online account I use and the account to which I send all my online purchase receipts and emails from charities. And…I think that’s…is that it?

No. There’s all those websites that I join not because I need to apply for a “free” registration just to look at-I mean research-a few things. Because there’s a word limit and there might be children reading this, I won’t list the websites here. But trust me, there are a lot.

And these sites all give the same direction: Choose a password that contains at least one capital and lowercase letter, one number, one symbol, is more than eight characters long, and is not like any other password that you have used in the past. In the beginning I used to be able to keep from the different passwords. But after password number sixty-seven I started getting confused. And I don’t remember the security questions either, because I always made the hint very cryptic to fool the team of hackers that I knew were gathered in a cave in Siberia, thousands of miles beneath the frozen tundra, wearing thick rimmed glasses and looking like showers were not an important part of their lives. Looks like the joke is on me.

Perhaps some day I will surmount this obstacle. Perhaps one day scientists will be able to increase intelligence by pumping fat into people’s brains. And perhaps this technique will enable me to memorize thousands of passwords and the names of all the Kardashians.

But in the process, will I forget that who that boy was…that little boy standing in front of his house, who loved his family, who loved life, and who had arms coming out of his ears?

Posted on 4 January 2011 by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When Computer Printers Printed on That Paper That Had Perforated Edges With Holes?

Remember when computer printers used that paper with the perforated edges with the holes?

I do.

The inside of a printer was a mystery to me but I imagined that the paper was threaded through spokes, and that was what the holes were for. All I know is that these edges made a big mess when they were ripped off and discarded. A wastepaper basket overflowing with those edges was a common sight.

The printer used to make loud screeching sound as it spit out this paper. And there was only one kind of print. In middle school we spent three class periods making a missile out of ASCII characters.

Also, the individual pages of paper had not been separated. The edges were perforated and the pages folded over each other like an accordion. When the paper came out of the printer you ripped off what you needed along the perforation, like toilet paper.

Of course I witnessed almost all of this from afar, as I did not have a computer at that time. These were the days when very few families had a computer. But we all knew those few special ones, the anointed ones who could be counted to bring in a dozen connected sheets that read “Happy Birthday” when hung horizontally across the top of the blackboard.

It has been a long time since printer pages were perforated and had edges with holes. Today you can get a laser printer for less than the price of dinner for two at a moderately priced restaurant. The pages are printed in any type, with any picture. If you want a missile, you just find a photograph of a missile and select “print” from the pull-down menu. And the pages print out so fast and easily that you can do your editing on a hard copy if you want. The wastepaper baskets are filled with these discarded drafts.

But at least they are no longer filled with the discarded edges with the holes.

Posted on 7 November 2010 by Mark Kaplowitz 0