radio days

"Henreeeeeeeeeeee! ! Henry Aldrich!"
"Coming, Mother!"

And with those words ringing through my ears, I am back home in the front room in Hinkletown! I looked up the date of the show's radio premiere and it was 1949! Though I was just small and I couldn't tell you a single plot of the show, I do remember vividly all the laughs and warm feelings it produced in my family. And how quaint to think of a family gathered in one room to listen to a show! The concept of family gatherings in one room is rare enough today, but just to listen and let minds fill in the details and keep eyes and fingers idle is beyond foreign these days!

Yes, we say, life was simpler then. But, seriously, didn't our minds have to work harder to create and flesh out the scenes we were hearing? Sometimes I think those days are looked down upon when actually they were in many ways far more inventive and creative because we had to fill in so many blanks on our own. And in that family gathering, most certainly every person had a different image in his head about what actually was happening. Whereas, with TV and DVDs everyone is being spoon-fed the images with little room for invention or interpretation.

Of course I wouldn't want to go back entirely to the world of radio, but I must say I am turning to it more and more as the multi-media technological bombardment can be quite exhausting!