I’m old.
In the back of my brain I accepted this ‘aha’ moment would eventually arrive, I was just not ready for ‘it’ to hit so soon.
I am old, if not before my time then certainly within my time, and the proof is all around me.
There is nothing overly profound with discovering we have suddenly become old.
It happens to all of us should we live long enough. In some cases, we become old without living all that long. That’s precisely how I feel today.
I am old even if I am only 60!
This actualization did not burst out of me via a single instantaneous response.
In hindsight, it’s been creeping in subtly the past few years, the same way dirt finds its way under a fingernail.
My 60th birthday back in May undoubtedly influenced some self-absorbed sense of aging.
The full-in-my-face realization, however, rapidly festered to a bursting point this week following a couple of reminders and lessons all within a 12-hour period.
My recent morning began with an in-depth workshop on today’s use of information and communication technology, where we are and where we are likely going.
It was a fascinating tip of the iceberg glimpse at a smidgen of the amazing, effective and diverse implements and social media tools available to individuals, businesses and municipal councils.
I was feeling overwhelmed by the presentation, and pondered if I was too old and jaded to keep up with the rapidly growing, changing technology devices.
Then I realized the enthusiastic, knowledgeable facilitator at the front of the room was older than me. That transferred the fears and excuses in my brain to the spam folder.
As the day progressed, I was constantly conscious of how much my life has adapted and become dependent on new technology and social media mediums.
Constant change is here to stay.
Every time I made a phone call, received a text, twittered, sent an email, logged into Facebook, or even checked my hockey pool standings, I paused for a second and paid note.
Today’s railroad is the Internet.
It wasn’t until supper that day how I fully realized my morning wake-up lesson had simply been a drop in the bucket regarding my lifetime of technological change.
I was heating soup in the microwave and watching a live newsfeed from Paris on my tablet when the irony of it all sunk in.
When I was a child, computer tablets never existed. Neither did microwave ovens in homes.
Our first TV was a one-station black and white and we marveled at it, massive rabbit ears (or coat hangers) and all.
When colour TV and cable arrived, we were over the moon.
Cell phones have evolved from the party line rotary phone on the wall.
We dialed five numbers back then in Kelowna. My first cell phone was the size of walky-talky. They didn’t take selfies, give directions home or do your banking.
Music collections have evolved from 78s, 33s and 45s to 8-track, then cassettes, to CDs, IPods, Bluetooth, etc.
Tired of all the profound thinking, I decided to spend an hour mindlessly sorting through boxes of old newspapers from my early reporter days.
Near the top was a copy of the Dec. 8, 1976, edition of the Capital News.
The headline read ‘New Press for Capital ‘ with a headline kicker ’High Speed’.
The story bragged about the new Harris V15A four-unit web offset from Fort Worth, Tex. (so it had to be big), assembled at the newspaper office at 287 Bernard Ave.
My brain spun as I recalled the day. Indeed how far we have journeyed.
When I first began in newspapers in the early 1970s, we still had copy boys and typewriters.
Scribes would type out a story on a stack of 5×8 page brown pages and give them to the editor.
He would edit the leaflets in a sea of red ink and send it back for rewrite on the Remington.
That scenario repeated over and over until the editor deemed the copy had little enough red ink that it could proceed to the typesetter.
The typesetter translated the story onto a tickertape of a sort that would then feed into a machine that magical processed and spit out the typed story on a strip of white paper.
A layout worker ran it through a waxer, cut, and pasted it onto a template page according to a mocked up dummy.
When stories and advertisements for each page were compiled and pasted, it was taken to a massive camera. The film was developed and the massive negative, once fully processed and paginated, was mounted onto a press drum.
Not exactly a quick process.
Today, I write my column on a laptop or tablet, spell check it (though often dangerous), and send it via email to the newspaper editor.
He gives it an edit, calls up the page he wants, and pastes it in himself.
Another button and the entire page is sitting in the press room waiting to be printed, (along with several other papers sent by computer from around the valley).
That ‘new’ Harris V15A was retired just a few years back, another sign I am old.
Suddenly, it dawned on me that I’ve become my Grandpa.
I can now tell tales to my grandchildren and great grandchildren like, “When I was a young reporter we used a thing called a typewriter, and I typed miles of words on my poor fingers…”
I’m old. And loving it.
