Convenience or Quality

Convenience or Quality

When I was a kid we had the media cabinet in our living room with a record player, a cassette player, and sometime in the late 80’s or early 90’s, a CD player.  

Records were obviously the mode of sharing recorded music for over 100 years, hitting the scene in the late 1800’s and held that position confidently.  But as all know, dealing with vinyl records is time consuming, they are delicate, things need to be handled with care, and you need a good record player to truly appreciate them.  

When cassette tapes were invented in the 60’s it would still take a decade or so before they would come close to toppling the preferred listening mode.  In 1984, they finally did it.  Cassette tapes were how you made mix tapes, how you recorded stuff with your friends, how you could copy and redistribute music and recordings easily from your home.  

What we gave up for this convenience…was audio quality.  

Teach A Person To Fish.

Teach A Person To Fish.

My oldest son, Foster loves fishing.  Regularly, he’ll say,

“is everyone else thinking about fishing right now?”

“No buddy.  Nobody is thinking about that.  Just you.”

He loves it.  He loves the calm and quiet.  He loves the excitement when you get a nibble.  He loves being in nature.  It is his passion right now.  He’s new on the journey, but he is jumping in, head first trying to learn everything about fishing that he can.

I was really more of a music, theatre, and dance kid.  I went fishing with my dad a few times growing up.  I love people.  I like nature.  I don’t love extended periods of quiet waiting…so fishing is not really my thing.  

So, I’m not a great leader when it comes to guiding my son in his fishing pursuits.

A Long Journey

A Long Journey

This past week we went to Disney World.  Sarah and I both hadn’t been in about 25 years or more.  I remember the wonder and magic, the rides and more.  

It’s grown, it’s changed, and you no longer stand in incredibly long lines.

Don’t worry, there are still lots of strollers, lots of Mickey ears, lots of tears and exhaustion…and some kids are crying and exhausted too, lots of hopes and expectations, and lots of credit card debt.    

But now there are also virtual lines, and lighting lanes, and queue groups, and magic genie plus on a Disney World app that tells you wait times if you do stand in line, and gives you directions to where you want to go, and ability to make reservations, and mobile order food and it was my room key and more.  

In some ways, this feels almost nothing like the park I went to 25 plus years ago…and yet in other ways it is oddly familiar.  It’s just grown up.  

Mac And Cheese

Mac And Cheese

Sarah and I used to work with college students.  One day Sarah was talking to one of the students and they said they had never made macaroni and cheese.  Sarah asked, “how was that even possible?”  

This student said, “I’ve always had someone do it for me, so I’ve never learned.”

We went home and taught our 4 and 5 year olds to make Mac and Cheese.