Sunday, February 22, 2009

Way Back in the Great Recession

My grandmother was born on the eve of the Great Depression. She tells the story of the day the bank men came in their long coats and bowler hats to tell her mother that the loan was foreclosed and the family had to move out. My grandmother's mother had told her to play with her dolls there in the front room - grandmother thinks it was to make the bank men feel extra guilty. Everything turned out fine in the end. They found a large, upscale house to rent for less than a song (the owners were desperate for anything they could get) and the mother slowly saved up money and bought another house near the end of the 1930's.

I wonder what sort of stories my kids will be telling their grandchildren.

"Way back in the Great Recession of the two-thousand-teens we had to sell our i-pods to buy shoes."

"Oh, Grandpa! No way!"

"Yup, and as our computers broke down pretty soon we only had one working computer in the whole house."

"Wow, Grandpa! How did you survive it?"

"I don't know. Mom and dad somehow managed to hang on to our internet service, but they did cancel the cable and satellite TV. The saddest day for me was the day we put our entire DVD collection up for sale on e-bay."

Pass me the handkie.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

For some reason, this reminded me instantly of your book! I wonder if you could bring in some of this into your MC's world...? :)

ladyrach14 said...

But, Rebecca, don't you know there's going to be a major solar storm in 2012 that will knock out all electronic devices and our communication infrastructure will be crippled for who knows how long? Better put your dvd's up for sale right now before it's too late.

Rebecca J. Carlson said...

ho ho ho.