My kid asked what a 'rewind button' was and I had to dig out my old Walkman

We were watching a movie and a character said 'be kind, rewind', and my 10-year-old just looked blank. I went up to the attic and found my old yellow Sports Walkman from maybe 1993, with a cassette still in it. Showing him how the tape actually moved and the little rewind gear spun was a weirdly cool moment. Anyone else have a story about explaining a totally normal piece of old tech to a kid?

3 comments

3 Comments

blake4322mo ago

Man, that reminds me of trying to explain a rotary phone dial to my niece. She kept trying to tap the numbers like a screen. It's wild how fast stuff becomes ancient history.

riley_coleman1mo ago

Atari had this same problem in the 80s when kids kept trying to blow into cartridges that didn't even have pins exposed yet, so this gap between physical and digital just keeps reinventing itself every generation.

hart.parker2mo ago

Totally, @blake432, my kid thought a floppy disk was a 3D printed save icon.