words said and words typed

My parents, maybe because they were mostly unaware of what we did during the day or because they wanted me to have the same carefree childhood they had, let me spend my days outside, bruising my knees and playing till the night was upon us. They weren’t too picky about what we ate, and I remember eating at McDonalds and also having those various sweets from the shop at the top of our lane. We had a lot of junk food, collected money for soft drinks and had achcharu and rata cadju from little shops. Our lives were simple; we played with mud, let the mosquitoes suck our blood and hadn’t even heard of mosquito repellent.

We were mostly barefoot, and rarely wore shoes or slippers. Our clothes were always damp with sweat and we didn’t care about what we had to eat. No one told us back then that certain types of food could give us cancer and we weren’t overweight.

We were happy eating fried manyokka, instead of the fancy potato chips. Not that we didn’t have the latter. My parents let us have the best of both worlds.

We didn’t grow up with mobile phones and only watched TV for an hour or two a day. This too was to watch cartoons. However, we didn’t watch Spongebob or any of those fancy cartoons. Instead we watched cartoons dubbed in Sinhala, Kumbichchi, Api Raja Ibbo and Pancha. When we did buy a computer, we used it to play Age of Empires, Sonic and of course, Super Mario. But mostly to draw on Paint.

I had new clothes, but most were hand-me-downs. This wasn’t because we couldn’t afford brand new clothes, but because it was a waste to throw away still-wearable clothes.

When we knocked our heads and bruised our knees or cut our palms, our parents didn’t rush us off to a hospital. Instead they gave us a long lecture, cleaned the wound and bandaged it. If we had fever, we were given Panadol and told to sleep it off. And we had no choice over going to school. They let us stay at home, but we were happy going to school. I went to a semi-government school, which was extremely dusty. A small classroom was packed with 40+ students and the grounds had no grass. We ran around in the dust but rarely fell sick. We drank tap water and ate food from the canteen that came from god knows where.

When we went on trips, we sang or we watched the passing cities, towns and villages. We didn’t have devices to listen to music and very few of us had cameras.

But most of all, we spoke. We preferred verbal communication as opposed to textual means. This was mostly because we didn’t know about texting or chatting. Those things didn’t exist back then. So we talked about anything and everything. We talked about the good things in life and the bad things. We talked about happy days and sad days. We used words and we listened.

This is why we can still meet for lunch or coffee and talk. This is why at least a few of us still know how to truly listen and appreciate the sound of words. This is why we still have friends in real life.

I don’t know who is better; online friends or friends IRL, verbal communication or textual communication, reading or listening, speaking or typing.

I’m not saying the generation I belong to is better than the next generation. I’m not saying my childhood was better. However, I do think we value words more than those born after us. Back then, we took down notes, pages and pages covered in ink. Slowly, electronic devices are taking over and kids can type notes on their phones, tabs and laptops. Teachers don’t read out notes anymore, they don’t write on blackboards and instead give out printed notes. Bristol board presentations have been taken over by PowerPoint presentations.


And most of all, words said have been replaced by words typed. People are not familiar with how words sound. They don’t appreciate speech.

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