THE OLDEN DAYS

   My whole life, in history class, looking through museums, watching movies and even digging up some pictures of my early family, I always pictured the old days in black and white. It's hard for me to get a clear picture of what things actually looked like for people in the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s. A very eye opening experience for me was a trip to the University of Pennsylvania. The antiquated campus seemed to bring me back a hundred years. Somehow, I knew that the same sight I saw was shared by someone many years ago, that as real as the buildings looked now, they looked the same for someone before my time.

   I feel like it's difficult to convey what I actually mean about this matter. Take for example a glass bottle of Coca-Cola. 70 years ago, this thing wasn't black and white... It was the same color, same taste, the same image it is perceived today. 

   Another experience that made me wonder was when I watched film of an old baseball game. The footage was choppy and the players were just blurs. Their odd baseball maneuvers seemed preposterous to me and in my mind, I could not put myself in their shoes. I could not imagine myself as a 1930s baseball player seeing a pitch come to me the exact same way it does today. Would I react the same way? Would the pitch do something I've never seen before? The "realness" is impossible for me to imagine.

   Also, Shakespearean times are difficult for me to imagine. Did the clothes they wore give off an aurora of wealth, or to the contrary, an impoverished stench, just by the the sight of them? Pantaloons were cool then and cargo shorts are cool now. Where did we go astray? Anyways, it's hard for me to accept what a Shakespearean person looked like. They looked like people do today. No different. Just their attributes were slightly askew. Over the years, the only thing that has changed in our appearance is hair, clothing and make-up.

   If you were thrown into the 80s, would you know where you were? Would you notice peculiarities in your vision? Would what you see be less crisp than what you see in our present day? Does vision somehow change to a different hue? The answer is no. But like I said, it's difficult to imagine. 

~This isn't the only thing I have trouble imagining. I'll keep you posted.