Have you seen the older lady in the Geico TV commercial who boasts that she’s now posting her vacation pics on her wall? Her living room wall? Miss Crankypants often feels like this poor woman, frantically trying to keep up with the latest stuff, the trendiest trends and of course the new buzzwords.
Although Miss CP wouldn’t be writing this if not for nerdy computer-inventing dudes who are now zillionaires, she sometimes wishes she could turn back the clock. A LOT.
See in 1972, Miss Cranky was a true MISS, in the prime of life. Back then her jowls weren’t so pronounced and she still had all of her teeth. Her hair was an actual color without chemical additives or long hours sitting in a chair with tin foil all over her head. In other words, she was young.
And the most complicated new and trendy device out there was the microwave oven. Many of the older folks back then thought the microwave was for drying off poodles. They quickly discovered it is a mistake to put tin foil, metal spoons or poodles into a microwave, but that’s another story.
The ugliest car on the road was the AMC Pacer, and this may still be true. We were somewhat disillusioned by the breakup of the Beatles, but we drowned our sorrows on the Disco floor. Life was so simple!
Except that if Miss CP actually arrived back in ’72, she’d probably be miserable. Lycra hadn’t even been invented yet! And without Lycra all sorts of unpleasant things happen to those of us with ample backsides.
Not only that but we had to type on typewriters! With sheets of carbon paper! Totally ruined your nail job, and got blue-black ink all over the place. And if you were a teacher, the carbon paper smudges clashed with the ditto ink, that garish purple stuff with fumes that could put you on the floor. We had to learn a whole lingo:
Teacher A: Did you run off enough copies?
Teacher B: NO! I can’t find the master!
Teacher A: It’s probably still stuck to the drum.
See what we mean? You are probably envisioning a slave market, complete with a drum-beating oaf and mincing master examining the teeth of some poor slave.

Contrast with today’s vocab:
Teacher A: I tweeted today’s lesson.
Teacher B: Oh I thought you were going to skype it.
Teacher A: Naw, I’ll just save it to my wall.
Maybe Miss Crankypants doesn’t need a time machine after all. And if you make comments about her jowls, she will unfriend you. That’s not how any of this works.