A Story of Progress

When I was really little back in the early 90s my dad had an old word processor an old word processor word processor is what Microsoft Word is it’s basically something that you would use just for writing.

But it was a whole computer only for that.

My dad had an old word processor and it could only do one thing process words.

It had no games and so I wasn’t interested at all.

OK.

Try sharing my emotions trying to share my feeling about this thing.

Back then most computers were similar to that very simple no games no fun.

A few years later though our family got a brand new computer with Windows 95 Windows 95 and that had way more functionality that could do much more.

It could it could do many many more things.

It had a color screen games and mass paint and it could even play videos.

It could even play videos but no internet.

It could also say it had no Internet there was no Internet.

It totally blew my mind at first.

It means something so amazing or so crazy you can’t believe it.

It totally blew my mind at first.

And I was so excited to use it.

So I’m talking about what it had some of the functionality and also trying to connect my emotion in that time back then to to getting that computer.

I played some of those games for hours on end and still feel nostalgic about ski free and M.S.

paint

ski free was an as a game where you were a skier and you’d ski down a mountain and then at the end of a game the this this monster would come out and eat you would always eat you always.

And it was very frustrating and very scary.

But the game was super fun.

Nostalgia is this feeling of a warm emotion a happy memory connected to something in the past we ever had a smell come into your nose and suddenly it brings you back to when you were in high school your first girlfriend or you hear a song and it does the same.

When I think of MS Paint or I see or I see the ski free monster I am transported back so I feel nostalgic.

When I was 10 we got a Dell and that computer could connect to the Internet but it was really really slow.

Web pages would take 20 seconds to load and I’d have to use the phone line to connect.

You couldn’t be on and when I say you couldn’t be on.

This is called the impersonal you.

It just means anybody who’s doing that.

Anybody who’s using the Internet you when you want to succeed in life you have to work hard.

Maybe I’m just saying that in general to anybody who wants to be successful or may want to be successful.

The impersonal you you couldn’t be on the phone and using the Internet at the same time.

So if I was chatting with my friends on a I am which was a very popular chat or messenger at the time.

If I was chatting with my friends on a I am sometimes my mom would shout upstairs Hey get off the internet I need to call grandma because I was using the Internet the phone line was blocked because it went over the phone.

So when my mom needed to make a call she had to ask me to stop looking at my email or whatever so that she could make a phone call very primitive.

Right.

Very very primitive.

Now if I were telling this story more casually with friends I would probably go into even more detail on each point I wanted to give you a simple example so that you could get a feeling and see how I would connect my emotions nostalgic about this or I was so excited about this how I would connect my emotions to the thing that was happening or the actual object the actual computer or the actual technology right.

So I hope that gives you a clear idea about how we can use some of these words and phrases and also how we can tell a story that’s interesting.

Keeping in mind that if I were telling this story more casually I would say probably much much more.

And it would be much more casual I would just speak freely.

I’m writing this down for you so that you can see it.

So now it’s time to practice this but I’d like you to do is tell me about the phones that you’ve owned in your lifetime.

The phones that you remember throughout your life maybe starting with a landline phone and then moving to the phone that you own now maybe a smartphone.

Talk about the differences between the phones the functionality but also talk about what was going on in your life at the time some of your memories that are connected to that thing.

How did you use it right.

And again try to connect emotion to events and description.

Try to use some of the words and phrases that we learned earlier in the class.

You don’t have to use all of them.

Certainly I didn’t try to use some of them right back then which is an easy one to use.

Try to use these when you do it and you recorded and then you listen back to it.

If it’s a good story at some point you should smile.

If you smile or maybe your mom smiles or your friends smiles when they listen to it then at least you know that you’ve made something you’ve done something that is able to move people and that’s what stories are all about.

Whether it’s a happy story a sad story or just one that is connected to your real emotions in some way.

Whether it’s a happy story a sad story or just one that is connected to your real emotions in some way.