I grew up in the analog world. Bike riding, BB guns, and Saturday morning cartoons were my life. Sitting around for hours was relegated to school and rainy days. There was no such thing as “unwinding” or “chilling out.” When we had free time, we ran away from our houses, found other human beings, and invented things to do.1
I could never have imagined a digital age. There was no streaming video; an episode aired once, at a specific date and time, and if you missed it, oh well. Better ask one of your friends what happened.
And there was no such thing as “online shopping” because there was no internet. Cyber Monday would have sounded to me like a bad science fiction film. No, if you wanted a toy or new clothes, and they didn’t have it in the store, you would need to write a letter to the company and request they send you a catalog so you could place an order by mail.
A lot of stores had catalogs, but the grandaddy of them all was Sears and Roebuck. If you weren’t around back then, and you don’t know what I’m talking about, imagine a Black Friday sales paper from your favorite retailer. Now, multiply its size by 10 and cram into its pages every single product the company sells. That might sound impossible or ridiculous to some folks, but for centuries ordering by mail was the only way to purchase anything but the everyday items you could find in a general store.
If you were a kid in the 1980’s, The Holy Grail of all catalogs was the Sears Christmas Wish Book.
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