BC Era - Before Computers, that is!

I had an old folk’s moment this evening. One of those times where you literally think to yourself “when I was a child….” followed by some nostalgic memory. In this case it wasn’t that I had to walk miles to school (and all uphill, right, Mom?) but rather a memory of pre-technology days.

I had been sitting here watching TV while bolts of lightening were literally flashing all around me. The rain had picked up and the wind was blowing it sideways against my window and I knew we were under a tornado watch. But since I was watching a program on cable, I no longer had the annoying yet informative beeping notices which had been shown on the local channels.

As always, I had my laptop next to me so I logged on to the Weather Channel. It has been a while since I had been on it and I discovered a new feature. When you are looking at your local radar map you can now enter in your home address and the map will pinpoint your location. Wow. Now I could follow the radar map of yellow and orange and purple storms as they had raced across my house. (OK so I could have stood outside and gotten wet, wetter and wettest as the storms passed by but this was a lot safer not to mention dryer!) Plus of course it gave me a preview of what was headed next to my house.

It was while I was looking at the exact weather expected at my address that I had my flashback. Out of nowhere I remembered as a child watching the school weather report on TV in the morning done by some old fat weatherman (even back then the weathermen on national news always seemed to be old and fat unlike the cute young women on local weather).

Back before computers, if it was going to be cloudy they had a cutout of a cloud that they would place over the city on the map. Rain forecasts were shown by cutouts of a child in a raincoat or umbrellas. And of course sunny day forecasts was just that – a cutout of a sun. That was it. No computers, no radar, no storm tracker or VIPIR or whatever they call it. Simply some jolly old guy with cute little cutouts he placed on a felt map. And yet today a satellite can monitor the sky and show me when a storm will be directly over my house. Wow I feel old. Then again on the bright side, at least I can say I had TV as a child and that the map contained all 50 states! Although you might have noted that I didn’t say if it was a yellow raincoat as that would imply color TV… {sigh}