When I was a little kid I had a tiny black and white t.v. with a knob that fell off. In the late eighties and early nineties this was how we changed the channel. This crappy old eighties television set was a big deal. Being that I was the oldest child I had my own t.v. in my room. This little t.v. set in 1991 allowed me to watch Strike the Gold win the Kentucky Derby on a spring day in Louisville Kentucky. Crazy how much times have changed since I got that t.v. I mean just look at the way the world is going with cable shows nowadays (you can check out this source here), people love watching t.v. and there is plenty of them to choose from. Of course, back then it was much more limited to what I could watch. But then that’s how I began to love horse racing and my love of horse racing was born through the t.v. I watched. In 1991 I felt damn happy to have my own television set in my room, even if the picture was fuzzy and I was watching Cheers in black and white. From this one memory of Strike the Gold, my love of horse racing grew and growing up whenever any one asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never said a teacher or a doctor like my friends. I wanted to train race horses.
Fast forward twenty so years and we live in a way different world than 1991 Amber remembers. As Brad Paisley said in his song Welcome to the Future
When I was ten years old,
I remember thinking how cool it would be
When we were going on an eight hour drive,
If I could just watch t.v.
It’s phenomal how the world can change in twenty years. I now have a giant twenty inch extremely heavy t.v. set in my bed room that I can’t pay some one to take.
I also had one of my life long dreams come true this week and I became an employee at Santa Anita Race Track. It took twenty years but my dream of working in the horse racing industry has finally come true.
What technology means to me these days, is having an Insignia tablet that is pretty much a paperweight. A $200 paperweight in which I can watch old episodes of Arrested Development on Netflix. Yeah that’s about it. I also love my in Insignia tablet for those days when I want to recall what dial-up Internet was like in 1999.
Ahh. Memories. Of what life was like before technology stepped in.
Still, I have to say that waiting five minutes for a webpage to open makes me so thankful that I don’t have that black-and-white TV with the dials on the front to change the stations.