Retronyms? They’re in the Icebox

Remember when we used to understand each other when we talked with a friend or wrote a thank you note?

I recently heard an author speaking of a new term called “retronyms”, words that have fallen out of favor as technology makes them old fashioned anachronisms.

 With the advent of computers, those of us who grew up with rotary phones do not understand the younger generation when they talk to us nor can we communicate with them.

Have you called your doctor’s office to make an appointment and hear, “Welcome to the Miracle Medical Associates. If this is an emergency, dial zero, now.” Dial? What’s “to dial”? Other than your 90-year-old granny, does anyone have a “rotary phone”? What’s “to rotate”? There are senior citizens whose medical conditions have worsened because they are still searching for the “pound” key. For them “pound” is a measurement for lamb chops. Is there a butcher shop anywhere? We also have to listen to the doctor’s recorded message because “the menu has recently changed.” I thought the diner had menus.

The 12-year-old walking down the street has a cell phone that vibrates with an incoming call. Does she know how to “dial a number”?

In the 1950s the initials C.D. meant “Civil Defense” and you were ready to drop under your fifth-grade desk and put your hands over your head to shield yourself from the thermonuclear blast that would incinerate your school, all the teachers, and your Davey Crockett lunchbox.

Many of us walked into a bank and asked for the rates on their CD’s.  Now we listen to CD’s. In the 1950s, Elvis and The Beatles recorded on vinyl record albums that came on 45 rpm or 33 long play stereophonic sound. Today, teens download iTunes on their iPods and iPads. Didn’t we watch Looney Tunes?

When was the last time you dropped coins into a jukebox at an ice cream parlor? What is a Wurlitzer or Seeberg anyway?

Remember when your mailman stuffed letters in your mailbox? Now we hear a voice in your computer saying, “You’ve Got Mail,” but it’s not real mail. Our mailboxes are in our inbox and the letter carrier doesn’t deliver spam. Didn’t we eat spam?

On Saturday nights I went to teen dances at the YMCA and sat with a girl, a coke and a 15-cent slice of pizza. Now we have websites where one can find a mate or match. Lonely people can go to “chat rooms” to meet people. Didn’t we use to go out to meet people?

We also ate tomato pies at pizza parlors. I asked my son to turn off the light in the parlor and he came back with a puzzled look.  “Where’s the parlor?”

 “Oh,” he said, “you mean that front room with the couch that nobody ever sits on?”

 Remember that 60’s song, “The Leader of the Pack” and the forlorn lyric, “I met him at the candy store”? Are there candy stores anymore? Can you eat in a “luncheonette” or sit on a red-leather stool that spins around? (Try or .) Are there any soda fountains downtown or soda jerks?  Are there any “downtowns” downtown? 

We used to go to a bank or a supermarket to wait on a line.

Today we go shopping “online” and don’t have the patience to stand anywhere.

We don’t tolerate stopping to pay tolls anymore and drive by as our E-Z Pass transponders register our travel.

Does anyone write letters anymore? There is a comfort in knowing that you can

read those letters in the future. I am sure many soldiers wrote home to their loved ones and those letters are still bundled in a shoebox for a granddaughter to read 50 years after they were written. 

Chips were either a salty snack or an old TV show with Eric Estrada. Now they store information in our computers.

 And that brings us to the fridge, or is it the “rigidaire— or maybe it’s the icebox.

Everybody seems to be carrying those $2 bottles of spring water. I remember my grandfather taking me to a natural spring where we filled a large container with real spring water. I felt like I was on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Do yuppies know that “Evian” spelled backwards is “naïve”?

We used to be loyal to our friends standing “side by side;” now it’s a refrigerator.

Teens know that a “crib” is not a place to rest a baby’s head with a blankie but rather the home of a 25-year-old millionaire sports star.

And rap?  My teacher told us to hang up our wraps when we entered her classroom. At home a wrap meant Saran Wrap. My mother was known to pick up a wooden spoon and give me a rap. Now rap is music?

The last time I went to a Bar Mitzvah, the D.J. kept yelling, “O.K., let’s all give it up for Scott!” Puzzled, I saw screaming 12-year-olds clapping for the Bar Mitzvah boy. My cowboy heroes told the bad guys to “Drop your guns and just give it up.”

Don’t get me wrong. Advances in technology have been evolving for centuries. and have made life easier for all of us. Whether it’s a microwave, a garage door opener or air-conditioning, we don’t discount the convenience of these advances.

These new technologies, however, have us losing all those personal connections that brought us together and made us more human. Walking into a post office, getting your morning newspaper at the same deli or writing a letter with a fountain pen (don’t ask) took time but forced us into social settings. E-mail and satellite transmissions from around the globe force the natural world to meet our needs. The question is, how much do we need? I’ll use e-mail and check my bank account online so I don’t have to wait on a line. But I still like using a gas stove to heat up my homemade chicken soup taken from the fridge, buying stamps from Joyce and hearing Jeff’s white mail truck at 3:15 p.m. every day.