Everyday skills change over time . . . mostly due to new technologies. Like these days, kids don’t need to know the best angle and air pressure to blow into a video game cartridge to make it work.
People online are talking about the “pre-’90s” everyday skills that they have . . . but are basically obsolete now.
Here are the best ones:
1. Wrapping textbook covers with a brown paper bag. Textbooks are mostly online now . . . and there’s no need to wrap a Chromebook in a paper bag.
2. Unknotting curly telephone wires to get all the curls facing the right way. Landline phones are gone . . . but untangling cords is still useful. For now.
3. Giving the TV a “karate chop” to fix the reception.
4. Remembering phone numbers.
5. The ability to make and count out change for a purchase. That’s even an expiring skill for CASHIERS. One person joked, “The total was $9.91. I gave the cashier $10.01. And you’d think I handed them a live grenade.”
6. Setting up a VCR to record a TV show in advance.
7. Writing in cursive. And reading it.
8. Using the Dewey Decimal System at the library.
9. Re-folding a map correctly. And maybe even USING one.
10. Developing and processing photographic film, and enlarging prints in a darkroom. (Yes, as an “everyday skill” . . . but as an artistic, analog creative thing, it probably won’t ever be fully obsolete.)
(Buzzfeed.com has the full list.)