What's different in your present---then what you imagined as a kid?--Al

-- Al Schroeder (al.schroeder@nashville.com), June 15, 2000

Answers

Well, I'm alive. When I was a kid I thought it was my destiny to die young -- by age 21.

Then when I lived past 21 I thought I'd have two kids by the time I was 25.

Still no kids.

Wah.

-- Katie (missmermaid@hotmail.com), June 16, 2000.

In my personal life, I imagined myself doing what my mother was doing at my age--sitting home and spoiling my grandchildren. However, since none of my children seem the least bit interested in making me a grandmother, I'm having to create a whole new identity for myself at age 57.

-- Bev Sykes (basykes@dcn.davis.ca.us), June 16, 2000.

I'm obviously the same generation as you, Al. I also expected that I would have visited at least a space station when I was 40, if I lived to grow up. (There was some doubt for a while.) And in 1989, the year that Easter Europe changed sides, I had this whole unreal feeling that I had somehow been shunted into an alternate reality, a timestream that had fundamentally diverged from the "real" one. This feeling has never quite left me since. The Internet just keeps it coming. :)

-- Magnus Itland (itlandm@netcom.no), June 16, 2000.

I came through "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" with Captain Nemo and later Buck Rogers in what ? (the 25h century) ? Doc Savage and the Shadow.

What's changed ? Mostly everything, what was cloud nine science fiction then has become a reality long since. Man on the moon, fiction then, reality now. Man made satellites, doing fantastic (then unknown) things, while orbiting the earth.

I imagined that crime would be non-existent, hadn't dreamed of air pollution so wide spread across the coutry, I am not sure when the Donora, Pennsylvania tragedy happened but think I was still a kid.

The transistor wasn't even a dream when I was a kid and a simple computer occupied a huge building, consumed huge amounts of electricity and generated enough heat to warm a small town. Bell Lab came up with the transistor and the miniturization of the world began.

Geez - - - what I said at he beginning - - - - it is all different.

-- Denver doug (ionoi@webtv.net), June 16, 2000.

I thought that we would be further along in space exploration. I imagined that a huge space station (like the one in 2001-a Space Odyssey") would be in full operation. I imagined world peace, and that there would be no hunger, diseases, or famine. By the year 2000 I wanted a "Star Trek" existence - where everyone worked toward the common good of all mankind, and there was no money, just credits. I imagined education and the way we learn to have become much more advanced than it has. And I wanted to be "beamed" from one corner of the planet to the next, in the blink of an eye.

I didn't expect to gain a single ounce of weight - but I have. And I didn't expect my Mother to be living with me - which she is.

I didn't expect to marry such a wonderful man - but I have. His only quirk is that he likes to climb big mountains. (He is on Denali, as we speak.)

The internet was a wonderful surprise.

-- Planet Earth (imagine@industrial-ideas.com), June 18, 2000.

I thought that when I became the age I am now (37) I would feel that I had 'arrived'. That I would no longer be searching or dreaming or wanting or hoping. And although I am happy with my husband and 2 children, there are still alot of those yearnings for personal growth and fulfillment that I thought would be gone by this age.

-- Kim Nelles (k_nelles@hotmail.com), June 26, 2000.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20000719/sc/faster_than_light.html

-- blog (blog@blog.com), July 21, 2000.