The luxury of making toast

Toast was a luxury at my house when I was growing up. We had a very old toaster that needed a big adapter to be plugged in, and both the toaster and the adapter were stowed away in a hallway closet.

It took several days of begging before my grandmother would go upstairs to try to find the darn thing – we only ended up using it a couple of times a year.

I thought of this today as I slipped a couple of pieces of potato bread from the freezer to the toaster as an evening snack. We use the toaster often, and we always keep it on the counter.

“How convenient,” I thought to myself after the bread popped up a couple of minutes later. Then I remembered what it used to be like (with my grandma's old toaster we had to keep checking on the bread and manually pull it up when it was ready).

I wonder how other people look at the world, people who grew up with toasters and Nintendo and VCRs. Or the kids today, who all have computers in their homes and their own cell phone before they turn 12.

They don’t have to be responsible – someone can always track them down. They don’t have to learn new things or be creative – someone else will do it for them if they just wait long enough.

Perhaps I’m being overly cynical – and I’m starting to feel like an old lady here talking about “the good old days” – but so many teens today have no idea and can’t even imagine what life was like with less technology. What will become of these children? Do we even dare to imagine?