One of the disadvantages of growing old is that stuff wears out. An entire corner of one of my molars just broke off last week, so today I went to the dentist to have that attended to. I was once again astounded at how wonderfully improved dentistry is now.
When I was a kid (back when dinosaurs ruled the earth), having a tooth filled meant hours of drilling. If the job was especially huge, you might get novocaine, which in those days took about a quarter to a half hour to start to work, and took the rest of the day to wear off. Ordinary fillings you just had to deal with it. Sometimes you would get “laughing gas,” nitrous oxide, but not often enough.
Today, well, the world has changed for the better. We call it novocaine but I think it’s something else. It starts to take effect in just a couple of minutes, and by the time I left an hour later, it was mostly gone. The cleanout and removal of an old filling took another few minutes with a high speed drill.
But the coolest thing was the new gadget. The dentist sprayed some sort of coating on the drilled-out tooth, and then used the new gadget to make a 3-D digital map of the surfact. Fifteen minutes later, a milling gadget in another room had made a complete customized porcelain filling that was then sealed into place. The doctor told me the machine is about a hundred times more accurate than any human could be, and that the inlay will last much longer than its predecessor, and I will probably never have to have it replaced again.
This experience reminded me of how many things are so much better now. People can moan and whine all they want about how wonderful the “good old days” were, to which I say “hogwash.”
If I were translating back then, terminological research would require hours at the library and cabinets full of index cards. And I shudder to think of what it would be like before word processing.
And yet, every single word anyone said in the House of Commons from the beginning of Confederation was translated into the other official language by professional translators, Og bless them.
In the good ol’ days I would now be dead or at least not enjoying the good health I have today.
I’d have to bang my thesis out on a typewriter. Editing mistakes would mean either get the white-out, wait for it to dry and try again, hope the correction ribbon’s not correctioned out, or put in a new piece of paper and start over. God help me if I wanted to insert or remove sentences or move paragraphs around.
I love electronic library catalogs. Card catalogs are good only for scrap paper.
My beloved grandmother is 104 and she never talks about “the good old days” The only thing she misses about the past, she says, is friends and family that have gone before her. She and I once had a conversation about her own childhood, and she wondered “How did we ever keep clean back then?” Grandma thinks indoor plumbing, washing machines, refrigeratior/freezers, and housekeeping appliances were God’s gifts to people to make their lives easier.
Air conditioning!!! In the 1930’s when it got so hot in the summer, and they didn’t even have a fan, Grandma described whole families going to the park to sleep outside. She didn’t like that at all. And modern medicine has kept her back pain at bay, and helped her survive cancer.
I’m with Spazcat, I’d probably be dead, or in very poor health, because of kidney stones and infections. But I’m fine now, and healthy. And I have a father living, although he had a heart attack, because of modern drugs and angioplasty. In the “good old days” he lost his father when Dad was a little boy, due to a heart attack.
I go camping a lot, and I’m always really happy to come home to hot, clean running water in the house. I’m sure there are people who lead happy fulfilling lives fetching water and fuel to heat it, but I’ll keep working in my cube and paying my bills to avoid it. Modern life is wonderful. Anyone who wants to live in the 15th century is an idiot (although, I’d be happy to visit, if the technology every works properly).
I would agree that most of the “good old days” yearning comes from isolated memories of a particular event; yeah, that ice cream tasted great, but it took forever to make, was made with seasonal fresh fruit, and partly tasted so great because it was such a rare treat.
I just wish there was a Ctrl-Z for life; you know, that wonderful combination of keystrokes that allows you to undo an error?
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to hit Ctrl-Z at any time and just undo those last few words/seconds?
Far better than a grand sweep back to the good old days…
To the OP specific reference to dental advances: Yes! Dental care when I was a kid would be considered torture by the United Nations today.
Another anecdote: Some decades back I taught high school English. In the students’ textbook was an inspirational story about a boy who contracted infantile paralysis yet struggled and eventually became a U. S. Supreme Court justice. The term “infantile paralysis” was footnoted with the explanation “polio.” My classful of youngsters were still stumped. “What’s ‘polio?’” One of them volunteered that she recalled that her baby brother recently had an immunization for it, so it must be some disease.
Wow! How fantastic that an entire generation had no idea what that scourge even was! I recalled the fear my parents had of us contracting it, stories of “iron lungs” and the like. After I explained it, the students shared my pleasure at the improvement, and we went on to discuss other things they no longer had to worry about that had been commonplace in the past.
I pointed out that a mere couple of hundred of years earlier, surgery was a last result and often resulted in death by infection. “What happened if someone got appendicitis?” somone asked. “They usually died, and quite painfully, too.” All eyes turned to the classmate who had recently returned to school after an appendectomy. “You mean, two hundred years ago, Janie would have…” Yep.
Inevitably, that guy whose name I forget will come in here saying how much better it was back in the 50s before “liberalism,” when decent white people weren’t subjected to rap music and lived Pleasantville-like lives, assuming they didn’t get polio or whatnot.
I wonder what I’ll be telling kids about in 50 years. That we couldn’t get an internet connection in the woods? What major convenience is coming up next?
People all dressed better then, and the clothing was of much higher quality. People wore three-piece suits and fedoras to baseball games, when they worked on the garden, on camping trips and so on. “My grandmother cooked meals in an evening gown and her finest pearls”, blah blah.
Houses were built better in the “good old days”, and they had built-in character from the time the first owner stepped through the front door. Everything now is ticky-tacky, will fall apart in 10 years, is sterile and has no character, and so on.
Food, candy and beverages tasted better, had real sugar, wasn’t as processed, and so on.
The things that, IMHO, actually were better about the “good old days” are nothing that really impact my quality of life. Radio programming was better before corporate ownership, cable television was better before the “Viacom effect” e.g. MTV losing its music programming, and computer keyboards rocked before membranes became predominant.
People dressed like snobs and show offs. And uncomfortably, to boot.
Houses were built with asbestos, kids got cancer.
Foods are still cooked the same way, only now without trans fats – if you don’t believe me, go to the grocery store, you’ll find all the same ingredients (perhaps not so much MSG) in the isles.
To be honest, this is, to some extent, true. It’s hard to argue that some, minor aspects of culture have high and low points. The 1970s were not a good time for interior design, and some years have been better than others in terms of music. On the plus side I think we’ve just been though the era of the best TV we’ll ever have for a long time.
I think - and I stress this is my opinion - that, at least in North America, this is the worst we have ever dressed in modern history. Ever.
Yeah, but at least we’re comfortable. I cannot begin to fathom the level of discomfort of cooking over a wood- or coal-burning stove while wearing a dress that came down to my ankles. Heck, within my lifetime we had the horror of stockings with garter belts. Panty hose are better, but the only time I wear even those is for a really special occasion, like my daughter’s wedding. Since the youngest is now married, I may never wear them again.
I’m sure other old ladies remember having to go to school in the winter in skirts and dresses. Your legs got DAMN cold, even with knee socks. Oh, sure, you could wear leggings, like a little kid, and die of embarrassment first if you wanted to.
