Things that have already become obsolete over the course of my 28-year-long life

This is the English original. You can read the German version here.

Walkmen

Discmen

Cassette Players

Bragging about how many CDs fit into your disk changer

Disk changers

The ability to type text on number pads

Your schoolmates showing off their super tiny phones

Looking up when a show is on in the TV magazine

Asking your Dad to record ›Asterix in America‹ on VHS because your at church on the weekend and he’s the only person in the family who knows how to use the VCR

Wanting my Dad to show me how to tape over the commercial breaks in ›Asterix in America‹

VCRs

Gameboys

Staying off the phone when your Mom is surfing the Internet

Staying off the phone when your Mom is on the other phone

The Arctic Monkeys

Using the time it takes the computer to boot to make yourself a bowl of cereal

Cooling the PC tower with fans so your parents won’t notice that it has been running all night playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 when they come home

The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Series

Those slingy toy-men whose limbs would stick to any surface I would play with for ten minutes before they stopped being sticky because they were covered in dirt and had turned into gross slimy gummy monsters. Forgot the name

The time when you couldn’t google things, so when you didn’t know, you just didn’t know

Kickers, Michel Vaillant and Once Upon a Time…

Going to the public library every two weeks to stack up on comic books

Furbies

Lego sets with Robin Hood in them

Playing Sing Star at birthday parties

Debates over leaving MySpace for Facebook on grounds of not seeing the need for anyone having more than one Social Media account

Condescending anecdotes over dinner of people driving into ditches because they were following a bad GPS system instead of using a map

Debates over where we are on the map you were using when the family went on vacation

Debates over whether Harry Potter is evil because it drives children into the practition of magic

Feeling trapped in computer class because the only game installed on the school computers was Pinball

Snake

PCs with floppy disc drives

PCs with compact disc drives

PCs with any drives except harddrives

Bragging about the space on those harddrives (one Gigabyte, dude!)

Searching for hours on the internet for the artist, song or album names of mp3s you have on your hard drive that only say „Track x“

Blink 128

Tamagochis

Your dad’s Palm-Pilot

Looking at the erotica section in the mail catalogues to glance at nipples

Your parents cutting out the erotica section in the mail catalogues

Looking at the lingerie section of the mail catalogues because the erotica section has been cut out and wondering why you never see a nipple there even when the bras are advertised as see-through

Secretly sneaking down the stairs at midnight to see strip shows on the private channels

Swearing to each other to keep the secret to your graves when you find your brother in the living room at midnight in front of the TV, holding the remote in an awkward position

Swearing to yourself to keep the secret to your grave when one night when the strip shows weren’t on you looked through the VHS tapes on top of the TV and found a well-hidden, unlabaled tape in the corner with the recording of a porn show on it

VHS tapes

Thank you for reading. Finished March 2018.

I’m an independent writer, translator and editor. If you think I can help you with something, shoot me an email at chrisloveswords@gmail.com.