F68 Class Speaker's Reunion Message

For those who missed the reunion (or couldn't hear the speaker), here is Kathy (Plyer) Moritz's great speech:

Welcome to everyone. I am Kathy Plyer Moritz from the Class of Fall 68. The class that painted the first block “L” in the football bleachers!

I wanted to briefly reflect on how far we have all come over the last 40 years.

Things were simple and less complicated 40 years ago. It was a time . . .

When we wrote letters with a ballpoint pen;

When the phone rang, you had to be at home to answer it;

When we had wall calendars to remember important dates;

When a Blackberry and an Apple were just fruit;

When our fingers actually did the walking through the Yellow Pages;

When we listened to music in our rooms from the sound of our record players;

When we did math in our heads;

When saving energy meant that your mom told you to turn off the lights before you left the room;

When we took the bus;

When saving the environment simply meant no littering, no graffiti;

When green was just a color;

When gym class was exercise;

When a cool car was a 57 Chevy, a GTO, a Road Runner or a 442;

When a ticket to a Lowell football game meant you got out of school early;

When movies on TV always had commercials;

When we had only had five TV stations to choose from;

When TV screens were curved instead of flat;

When video games were unheard of;

When we actually visited our neighborhood library to do our homework;

When we understood the Dewey Decimal System;

When we used a dictionary and the Encyclopedia;

When the space shuttle and the space station were only written about in science fiction novels;

When we never heard of Cap and Trade, Stimulus Packages, TARP Funds, Bailouts, texting, twittering, blogging, Google, Yahoo, Facebook or MySpace;

When everything and anything we did had nothing at all to do with computers, cell phones, I-Pods, rap music, Netflix, CDs, DVDs, high cholesterol, transfats, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars or Oprah;

And when 9/11 was just another day in September. . . .