Yesterday When I Was Young

          You want to know how old I am? I can remember when new potatoes were actually new.

                 There was nationwide amazement. We had only known thick-skinned russets. And now people had invented a new plant?

          I colored with crayons in the now retired colors of maize, lemon yellow, blue gray, raw umber, green blue, orange red, orange yellow, and violet blue. I still miss them.

          As a child I was given paragoric when I was sick. Today it’s classified as a Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act. I do not miss paragoric.

          My girlfriends and I wore skate keys around our necks and chewed Fruit Stripe Gum.  We dreamed of wearing Go-Go boots and buying the next adorable Troll doll.

          We dutifully glued Green Stamps into booklets that could be redeemed for something really cool, like a portable hair dryer with a pink bonnet.

          If you had given us bowls of quinoa, tofu, boba, kale, chia seeds, or agave, and said these would be popular in the new century, we would have wrinkled our noses and said, “Nuh-uh.”

But we would have been thrilled to think that you could access life hacks at the touch of a button. See my Youtube Mom videos right here.