Ten Ways the World Has Changed Since You've Been in School

1. iPods. We thought cassette tapes were the bomb. Now we can make mixes of anything and download yoga podcasts.
2. Yoga. When I was in school, only weird triple-jointed people did yoga (or so we thought). Good thing we learned more about it, huh?
3. DVDs. Skipping ahead to the good parts (like when Mr. Darcy emerges from the bath all wet and yummy) is so much easier!!
4. Viable minority and female candidates for President (one of whom will be the Democratic nominee, thank you very much). This is actually darned exciting.
5. Fall of the Iron Curtain. I actually had to take "Americanism vs. Communism" to graduate from high school. My kids today have no idea what it was like to be afraid of the Russkies, and they don't know much about the Soviet Union, either. Makes teaching Animal Farm that much harder.
6. Global Warming. We never thought about it, and we certainly weren't worried about good gas mileage. I drove a nine-passenger Chevrolet wagon and didn't fret about how much it took to fill it up. Now, I'd have to sell plasma to afford to drive that tank.
7. Harry Potter. A young reader phenomenom like "Pottermania" has been long overdue.
8. 24-hour cable. I remember when they played the National Anthem on TV stations at midnight, then everything went to test patterns or static until 6 am. My students can't fathom this.
9. Wal-Mart. It's taking over the civilized world, and that is not a good thing. Last summer, my husband was with a good friend of ours in Canada. They were driving up the northernmost highway in Northern Ontario on their way to Hudson Bay, going through a podunk, dying town, population about one hundred people--and it had a freakin' Wal-Mart. Gadzooks.
10. Marriage and children. The toughest job I've ever loved.