Something disturbing happened to me while scrolling social media.
I came face-to-face with my own mortality, as an aging millennial, thanks to a simple video from a man I have never seen before that really felt like a personal attack.
In it, the man asked members of his family to show him the hand signal for a phone - you know, what you'd gesture if you were telling someone 'call me!'
His wife did it how I'd imagined. Hand to the ear, little finger and thumb extended to represent the speaker and microphone parts of a landline phone.
Then he asked his young daughter, and she just... held her palm to her ear. A flat palm. No extended pinky, thumb straight up against the rest of the hand.
@guesswho_718 Even the hand gesture game has changed @kamilo.ny @guesswhos_wifey @official_daniella12 #LaughPause #dadsoftiktok #momsoftiktok #over30 #kids #fyp
♬ original sound - Daniel Alvarado
What. The. Hell.
It disturbed me greatly.
Technology has changed so much since the 90s and early 2000s that kids may not have ever actually seen or used a landline phone. That makes sense because who even has one anymore, but I hadn't considered what this means for a pretty simple, widely known hand gesture.
It turns out, there are a bunch of things those of us 25 and older have been doing all our lives that will die out with us. Apologies in advance for this, it may plunge you into a quarter or mid-life crisis.
Cursive.
Back in the day, cursive (or 'running writing') was important because it was the most efficient way to use ink and a quill. I'm not that old, but still recall very clearly learning how to link my letters together in primary school.
It's still taught in some schools in Australia, but there's long been debates over whether to remove it for good because of you know... typing.
Cursive was taken out of nation standards in the US way back in 2010, though some states have different rules about whether or not it must be taught, and it's also a bit of a 'sometimes' thing depending on what school or area you find yourself in within pretty much the entire Western world, including Australia.
Just saw a trend on TikTok challenging people to write their name without lifting their pen... Does Gen Z think they invented... cursive????
— Kelsie Patrick (@_KelsiePatrick) October 16, 2020
And you know if kids aren't learning it, they're going to have a really hard time reading it.
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