Wow! Things sure have changed a lot since I was a kid!

When I was a boy, Christmas was a very exciting time for me. In my family, it was my birthday and Christmas day that landed me the new toys that I desired the most – a chance to choose something special that normally wouldn’t be available to me due to cost or size or what have you. This would be the opportunity for me to select something special. The toys that I remember loving the most were Mr. Quarterback, the Evel Knievel stunt cycle, and Tyco slot car racing tracks with remote control cars. Hi-tech? Ha, hardly! I had to get on my hands and knees to hand-crank the handle on the stunt cycle. Mr. Quarterback had to be pulled back and was nothing more than a spring-loaded catapult. I guess my old Atari system would have been the closest thing to compare to today’s technology.

Enter the digital age!

As I grew older, video games started to occupy my time. I was enthralled by the whole “video screen display,” and as the years went by, the quality and resolution would continue to get better, bigger and faster. I went from playing games in arcades to digital pagers, which in turn would blossom into hand-held cellular phones! These days, it seems like almost everything is connected to a digital interface. You can even buy greeting cards that play music or have a personalized display screen embedded inside them!

Now that I am older and have children of my own, I sit back and watch them enjoy the hi-tech toys of today and am amazed at how natural it is for them to embrace them. They have high-resolution video games, drones that fly with incredible accuracy, smartphones, tablets, electric scooters – the list goes on and on. I wonder what hi-tech toys my grandchildren will play with. It will be exciting to see what they come up with next!