text: how was life different when you were a child? socially, technologically... the norms of everyday life. what were the differences then?  this question is open to all age groups. when i was a child, we did not have vcrs.  if we missed a movie in the theater or wanted to see it again later, we had to wait for it to come on tv.  often, when it did, it was edited to fit a time slot.  i remember waiting once a year to see "the wizard of oz."  at easter we waited for "the ten commandments" and "ben hur."  we didn't have video cameras, so if you wanted to record moments like piano recitals and swim lessons, you had to have a movie camera.  i was the only one i knew in my age group who had one.  my grandpa had one and would do these elaborately staged family gatherings to catch us all on film.  he had to set up bright lights, and we all looked artificial and like deer in headlights.  we didn't have video games.  the first one i remember was "pong."  my cousin had the atari game system.  we spent hours watching those little white lines move across a grey screen.  hard to believe now.  we didn't have cell phones and computers.  i was a little bit of a hold out, but i didn't get my first computer until i was in graduate school.  i couldn't face typing my thesis over and over on my typewriter.  i had a dot matrix printer, which used paper that was perforated and had to be pulled apart.  our phone was a plain black, rotary dial phone.  we had one.  i got a blue phone of my own when i was in high school.    i loved records and would buy 45's of the top hits often.  i also bought albums of barbara streisand, jim croce, and broadway musicals.  i listened to them all so often that i hardly had an album that wouldn't hiss or skip.  we hardly ever ate out when i was growing up but we did get "fast food" from time to time. we'd have macdonald's on friday night while my parents went out and we watched "the brady bunch."  sometimes we'd have kentucky fried chicken (it wasn't called kfc) on sundays after church.  we go out quite often compared to when i was growing up.  sometimes with the price of groceries it even works out cheaper to go out.  i don't remember it ever being that way when i was a kid.  we had one family car when i was growing up.  there weren't any seatbelt laws, and we would all pile into that car.  when i was pretty small that was a vw bug, and one of us always had to lie down in the little space behind the back seat.  it sat over the engine and was hot.  i remember that we went camping and put a mattress in the back seat and we all rode piled on top of it.  we didn't have to wear helmets when we went bike riding or roller skating, which we did every day in the summer.  we would stay outside playing in the neighborhood until the street lights came on, and my parents never worried that someone would snatch us or that we wouldn't come home that night.  we would walk to the movie theater by ourselves and stay all day since they would show the double feature over and over again and you could watch as many times as you like.  no one worried then about when the movie started.  you just showed up whenever, and if you missed the beginning, then you stayed to watch the movie over again.  "star wars" is the first movie i remember that showed only that one movie and you were told to arrive at the beginning and had to leave after that one showing.  it cost $3.50, which was a lot of money for one movie and one showing, but some of my friends saw it 14 times.  we were in church every time the doors were open, which were for us, sunday morning, sunday night, wednesday night and various other rehearsals and events.  now most people i know who go to church go on sunday morning and then maybe to a small group during the week and an occasional event here and there.  there are many people i know today who have never been to church.