Once upon a time, my children, before the Social Media Olympics, before the rub-on tan; before the laptop with no DVD drive, before the waters had begun to rise again; before the Hybrid and the Hulu, before the earbud and the Entenmann’s outlet; before there were tweets and tweakers, yea afore they had invented the Internet, and a Y2K for threatening it; before the Twin Towers and the Patriot Act; when government loans went not to GM but to Chrysler, not to solar power scams but to ethanol scams; before the days of grunge and not only self-cleaning ovens, but also disposable microwaves; before smart phones, and when the cell phones of ancient days were big as baby badgers; before the lemonade made with powder in easy one-serving pouches and before the coffee from the people called Keurig; when fax machines had first begun to roam the earth (for commercial use, I mean, since they were actually invented in the 19th century, but that is a tale for another day); before “impact” was used as a verb; in the olden times when Clint was still making ‘Dirty Harry’ movies and Stallone was knocking out Rocky sequels; in the age (my whelps) when people waited in gas lines instead of lining up to the buy the new iPad; and we had to make do with channels 2,4,5,7,9,11,13 and PBS; before Quizno’s and Subway, but not before the venerable Togo’s; when Kinko’s was really Kinko’s; when tapping on a screen meant better TV reception, not scrolling through memes on Facebook, and founding a ‘pen-based’ computer company — let alone one that relied on the human forefinger — would get you bankrupt before it would get you on the cover of Forbes when you died; before the second Jerry Brown administration and nearly before the first; oh my progeny, my boys and girls, oh before those times … I was young.
Yes, it’s true. The Fat Guy was a Fat Little Boy.