• When our children are older, we might find ourselves asking them, “Do you remember eating watermelon with seeds?” or “Have you ever seen a payphone?” Here’s a list of some things to try with your kids now, before we can no longer experience them at all.

    1. 1. Eat seeded watermelon. One day this might be called heirloom watermelon if it exists at all! The taste is sweeter and the flesh is a more vibrant hue of red (perhaps healthier for that reason?). It is difficult to find and is usually only carried at a local health food store or co-op. Rightfully so, it is only available in its proper season (summer). Have a watermelon-seed-spitting contest in your yard or at the park. Tell your kids it is the only time it is appropriate to spit out food at the table. We love eating seeded watermelon so we buy huge quantities to keep up the demand. The seedless watermelon farmers will become dependent on Monsanto’s watermelon seeds and won’t be able to grow their own watermelons without purchasing the seeds each planting season (possibly driving up prices of watermelon). All because people don’t want to be inconvenienced with a few seeds. Another benefit of seeds is that they slow down the eating process, and the experience of eating a watermelon becomes almost meditative, and does not encourage excessive or quick eating.
    2. 2. Use a payphone. They are hard to find and not always the most sanitary choice but at least you can start a discussion with your kids on how life may have been different (for better or worse) before cell phones. It is also fun inserting the coins to pay for a phone call to grandma. (Bring alcohol wipes to clean the phone first).
    3. 3. Use a phone with a chord on it – before wireless takes over everything.
    4. 4. Show them a newspaper. Start with the comic section to lure their interest, and then explain how a newspaper works. Let them smell the newsprint, and discover how the ink stains their fingers. Really engage their interest with some silly putty and press it against the print to make a copy of the text.
    5. 5. Explain what a voicemail message is because one day we might only be using text messages. Discuss what the benefits are of each – why might it be beneficial for communication to hear the intonations of a person’s voice versus reading the words?
    6. 6. Go to a drive-in-movie theater. You might have to drive a distance to find one because only a few exist. Quite a fun experience for all though!
    7. 7. Memorize the multiplication table. Before common-core changes the way math is done forever.
    8. 8. Sharpen a pencil.
    9. 9. Eat crackers that don’t say gluten-free on the package.
    10. 10. Show them a record player and a CD player. Otherwise, music just magically appears on telephones or computers to our kids. Explain the recording process.
    11. 11. Go to the bank to make a deposit, because soon it’ll all be done online.
    12. 12. Use an encyclopedia set. The library still has them.
    13. 13. Find a library that uses the Dewey decimal system and have them search for a book without using a computer.

    So they can say: “I’ve done that!”