December

 The boy and I were in the car and Collective Soul's December came on the radio.  I was like dude, this was a great song back in the day.  I proceeded to tell him this was my "go to" song for car audio and told him the story of how I changed the radio in my old Honda Prelude.  We were listen to the song and was like, do you hear the bongos?  On a good setup you can hear the air in the bongos.  I turned it up and you could hear the air in the bongos in the Lexus.  We're driving down the road and he asked "How did you learn how to change the radio in your car?"  

There weren't any instructions on how to do it.  You went to a store like Circuit City and listened in the demo room and told the guy what you liked and asked what you needed to make it look nice, purchased the items and just started taking the car apart.  Without instructions?  Well, yah, without instructions.  There were no instructions back then.

Car's weren't as elaborate back in the late 80s or early 90s.  The radio was a separate item and not part of some kind of integrated entertainment system.  It was a radio.  So you just took it apart, spliced a few wires and installed the new rig in the dashboard where the old radio was.  Except it now had a cd player in addition to the radio and was more powerful.  

I then explained how Poppy was pretty good with electricity and he showed me how to use a meter to get everything wired in properly into the electrical system of the car.  I don't remember any of the knowledge he shared because I didn't do it enough....

Anyway -back then we didn't wait for a how to guide or watch a video online.  We made do with our own devices and just did things.  Minimal instructions.  We just got our tools, reached under the dash and started disconnecting stuff until we got the existing radio out.  There was nothing to it.

The What's interesting to me is kids today would never think to change their radio and would have no idea where to start.  They'd want a video to watch or a pre-assemgled instruction book with pictures to undertake the project. 

We were either stupid, fearless or both.  We just changed the radio without much of a care in the world.  It was simple enough and we did it.  How times have changed.  

I'm glad I was raised in a simpler time.  A time where we were able to just do things because we wanted to.  Didn't need to know what we were doing.  We just "winged it" and figured it out as we went along.  Nothing lost, some cool gains.  

It's like the kids today are part of a system.  A cog in a machine.  In the 80s and 90s there weren't systems and cogs.  Kids did what they wanted with what resources we had available.  Sure there were the rich kids that paid someone to install their fancy Nakamichi radio with a 200 watt per channel amplifier.  Then there were scrappy kids like me that bought a little radio player and just figured it out.  Somehow got it to work.

I think that's what gets me about being in the job market today.  Those with the jobs look for all this formal education and training.  To talk to someone about why their car doesn't work and what it needs.  Those of us who were scrappy kids learned all this stuff through trial and error.  Not every job needs all these fancy credentials and trainings.  Knowing how to communicate and having a strong work ethic will serve you well.  The trick is convincing others of the practicality of these two qualities in the work space.