What would we do without modern technology??

25 years ago my parents would pack my brother and I into the car with some coloring books, crosswords books, a couple of pillows and we would head to Panama City Beach. At that time it took a good 8 hours to get there. I think we can drive it in about 7 hours or a little less now that we have better roads. We would leave before daylight and stop outside of Montgomery and eat breakfast. Most road trips when I was child there wasn't any entertainment. We made up our own games or we had coloring books or crosswords.
This past weekend I dreaded the 4 hour trip to Drew with my son because I felt like several hours in the car he would need some entertainment. Thanks to modern technology he was entertained by watching DVD's most of the trip.
Can you imagine the excitement that we would have felt to be able to watch our favortite cartoons in the car 20 years ago?
It would have been awesome!! Oh - to be a kid again. They really have some cool stuff these days. The coolest thing we had as children was the portable cassette player with headphones. We were top of the line. I didn't have one for a long time. My mother would make my brother share his sometimes. I remember his headphones had orange foam on them. I thought that was so neat.
One of the earliest technology features for the car that I can remember my mother having was a 8-track converter. She had a 1983 (I think) 98 Oldsmobile, two door car...this thing was a mighty ship let me tell you. It had a cassette player and she didn't have many, if any cassettes at the time. So they bought an 8 track converter. We were cool!
How many people do you know that can say that they have cruised in a car that played 8-tracks? yeah...hilarious.
Anyway...my point is that I am loving modern technology. It seems to take away the stressful moments of life. He enjoys the DVD player so much that he requests to watch it on the way to daycare every morning now. It's only like a mile from home but it's a must. This morning he told me that he wanted to watch his computer when he got in the car. *laugh* I thought it was sweet.
As he gets older I will probally limit the DVD time in the car on long trips. I want him to share the joy of the old road trip games...such as ABC game, how many state tags can you find?, slugbugs??.
We have planned a few more road trips in the next 3 months. So I will get to put the DVD player to use again. The old bad thing about it is...it's hard to talk over the music to Thomas the train. Ever so often you get a train whistle and you look outside the car and think where's the train...only to realize it's Thomas.*laugh*
Anyway...I can't wait for the next adventure on the road.