“Grandpa,” asked Cindy, “how come I can’t browse you further back than your wedding?”
He put his hand on Cindy’s shoulder and looked down at her Tactive. “That was the day I decided to start recording.”
She tried, unsuccessfully, to digest that. “I don’t understand.”
He pulled a chair next to her. “People didn’t always record from birth, honey. In fact, when I was born, there wasn’t such a thing.”
Cindy tipped her head a little to one side and looked up to him. “You’re being funny again. I can tell.”
“No,” Grandpa insisted, “if we wanted to keep something, we had to use a little box and point it at something. Some boxes recorded only a little square still spot, some did moving spots with sounds. Never smells, emotions or ideas though.”
Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “That’s silly! What if nobody brought a box!”
“Then that moment was lost, or you just had to tell someone what you remembered about it.”
“Wow, Grandpa!” she said, slowly nodding her head left and right, “back then sure was silly!”