Things You Won't Know About

Dear Lucia,
I know it's been some time since I last wrote you a letter. Much has happened in that time. You have several words at your disposal such as Momma, Dada, hi, hey, dog, no, etc. You're crawling like a champ and can climb most furniture. Your favorite pastime is to walk while we hold your hands for balance. Oh, and today we decided you have chicken pox.

What's strange in all the things you are doing are all the things that you will never do. These are things that I or your mother have done or experienced, but you will not because times have changed and technology has evolved.

Take a newspaper for example. You may not ever hold and read a newspaper that is actually made out of paper. We don't even have one delivered to the house anymore as we read the paper online. While it is possible you may be exposed to a paper newspaper in your lifetime, I'm certain you will not have black fingers from the ink that rubs off of a newspaper. Somebody fixed that years ago.

Something else you may never experience is a Lego set that isn't primarily filled with rectangular pieces plus a few random wheels, windows, doors, etc. Even now, Lego sets are loaded with all kinds of specialty pieces. The days of building models that are all boxy and pixelated are long gone.

What about a rotary phone? Your mother bought you a toy rotary phone, but you probably will never fully grasp what it is. You may never know a day when you can't carry a phone in your pocket or use it to surf the Internet.

There are plenty of other things you won't know about. There's encyclopedias, VHS, dot-matrix printers, joysticks, privacy, and cursive handwriting to name a few. The list goes on and on. Things your mother and I became very accustomed to will not exist at some point during your lifetime (if they're still around now).

This is not to say that your life will be less fulfilling than ours. You will have your own experiences and routines that will become mainstays in your life. Sometimes you may have to listen to me grumble about how things were better in the olden days, but you'll learn to ignore my complaints.

So, when you hear your old man talk about how back in the day he used to blog and update his Facebook status, just listen. I'll promise to do the same for you.

Love,
Dad.