I read an article reminiscing about obsolete skills, and my comment turned into a blog post, so here I am. I am a storehouse of dead and dying expertise. It’s clear here I’m a generalist, but where I’ve just touched on a few skills, I’ve had decades to dedicate to mastery of quite a few.

I used to be able to take shorthand at 85 words per minute. It helped taking notes in college but eventually I had no use for it, fell out of practice and am probably down to 40wpm anymore (the speed we all started at), trying to remember brief forms and pre/suffixes. I still type 75 wpm with 98% accuracy (I learned with carbon paper for copies since Xerox wasn’t a common thing and students weren’t allowed near the Mimeograph machine). Teacher typed 120wpm on those bulky old IBM typewriters of the 80’s, and when she did, it sounded like an automatic weapon. As a kid I did ASCII-type art on a typewriter before anyone in town even had a computer. Speaking of keyboard creations, I played an actual piano decades before learning GarageBand. I did film photography before my first 1-mp digital camera and later DSLRs. My proficiency at researching for school reports via library microfiche was unmatched. So was my quick-draw savvy at stopping runners in my pantyhose with clear nail polish.

Once I walked or biked everywhere, because our town was so small I could. I was a lot thinner then, and my food didn’t poison me and they didn’t charge us more for less ingredients. I read a thing called a newspaper where I could read the stock numbers and respond to classified ads. Heck, I typeset and proofread five of our local publications at our local newspaper; it was my first job. Bigger cities had more modern setups, but I admired my old boss’ daily dragon-slaying of the cast-iron, behemoth, hungry, open claw of a printing-press-of-death that we all were forbidden to approach.

I can also embroider some nice French knots and lazy daisies, rewind my cassette tapes on a #2 hex pencil, sew garments from patterns or even make my own patterns, do analog special effects on my VHS camcorder, write proper correspondence and essays in MLA Handbook style, and strap my metal skates onto my shoes and face-plant for skidding on the tiniest pebble.

Cooking things from scratch counts among my abilities, although I draw the line at shooting and dressing out my own game. I’ve grown and harvested veggies. I’ve fixed broken light switches without shocking myself and with zero training, just common sense. I have designed and built my own furniture–I was trained on that, from wood to metal to plastics and upholstery. I can do rudimentary auto maintenance. Many times I learned a new skill because I just couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it. Other times it was forced on me, or I just wanted to. I can perform my own business filings and simple tax preparation. I can diagram sentences and do basic math in my head. I taught myself calligraphy in junior high. I learned foreign languages via (gasp!) books, vinyl records, and cassette tapes. I’m actually happy about the lasting resurgence in popularity of vinyl and its warm sound. In fact, to the younger generations, our old castoffs are fascinating new discoveries. Like the old song says, “Everything Old is New Again”. It’s rather amusing from this side of it.

 

Moreover, I can draw, paint, compose music, play several instruments, write poetry, sculpt, weld, woodwork, solder electronics, build and light architectural models, design and fabricate costumes, sets, and props, and I’m writing a novel. And I don’t use AI!

I can do tasks and operate mechanisms that people who are technically adults have never even heard of. Old school, baby! I freaked out a guy–he had to be in his late 20’s, at a gas station–by carrying my map in for specific local information; he said, “What is that? I’ve only seen one of those at my granddad’s; wow let me look at it.” I showed him how to use the legend, after defining what a legend was. Everybody learned something and I got some great rural photos on a new route.

But if you really want your mind blown, my mom remembers back during the Great War when only rich people had butter; in her household she was the one mixing food coloring in softened oleo so it looked appetizing instead of pasty and white, and she sculpted it into a nice little flower shape before firming it up again in the icebox. She remembers before aluminum foil, and long before television. Among my dad’s myriad childhood jobs of bygone days was the position of Soda Jerk, which is not one of the top 100 listings on Indeed or LinkedIn.

I always appreciated the old ways, and thought it was not just sad but possibly folly letting such know-how fall by the wayside. Our national documents are written in cursive, and there’s a generation of young people who can’t read letters from their own grandparents, let alone the unedited original Constitution, Bill of Rights, or Declaration of Independence. Museum docents must be able to explain and demonstrate archives from the past to students and patrons. Increasingly, old-world artisan mastery is lost to time because nobody apprentices anymore, so antiquities and landmarks cannot be authentically restored. We are losing our connection with our own ancestors. Our own history is dying. I am a passionate advocate of preserving it, but it takes more than a village.

Yet I don’t just stagnate in obsolete, outdated or traditional methods. I started computers with the Apple IIe, went through Commodore Amigas making dot-matrix-printer art (ugh), went through a dozen iterations of AutoCAD and MacDraw and Aldus Freehand and Corel, and Office and Adobe’s infancies until today. Sure, I worked as a data processor when computers still took up a small room and had disk drives bigger than your microwave. I’ve also built WordPress websites with even a little coding, learned laser cutters and 3D printers, raster and vector asset creation, am getting into digital collectibles (NFTs) and crypto, and I have learned various other skills along the way. It’s harder to learn new tech now; it changes so rapidly–but I do not give up. The old and the new can co-exist.

We cannot and should not forever linger only in the past–we must learn from the past AND live in the present and look to the future–because it’s happening, like it or not–and failing to plan is planning to fail. Your brain will grow if you feed it. I’ve had a lot of years on this planet and that’s how I’ve had time to learn so much…and I’m not about to stop.

But if you found your great-gramma’s old journals…and the salty/spicy parts are in shorthand…I’m one of the very few who can still translate it for you.

 

 

– ♥ Eilee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© 2024 L. Eilee S. George, All Rights Reserved.