Skills I Have That Are No Longer Needed

I've realized, recently, that a lot of the skills that I have painstakingly acquired over my 46 years are now completely useless. Like the universe and technology have declared "thank you, darling, but we won't be needing you now". Such as:

• Writing a cheque- Since the advent of the debit card, I only write a cheque for the couple of dollars I end up owing Revenue Canada every spring. (On which I write "choke on it".)
• Changing a typewriter ribbon- A messy business under the best of circumstances, but which became a tussle to the death of one was not. I got to be pretty good at it.
• Rewinding a cassette tape using one's little finger- Cassette tape players had a vindictive streak, in which they would eat the tape, and when you pulled the cassette out, the guts of the tape became unravelled. I was very good at coaxing the tape back in, using my little finger and some kind words.
• Loading a film in a camera- Very tricky. If you didn't get the 35mm film in just right, you would think you were winding the film as you took the pictures, but you were not, and you'd end up coming home from you cousin's wedding with the pictures in your head and the film pristinely nestled in the wrong end of the camera housing. My brother was very good at this, too.
• Counting back change- There was a time when you had to figure out the change you were giving back to a customer, right in your head, without the cash register telling you what to do. Even though I am completely useless when it comes to math, I could do this.
• Using a credit card imprinter- Back in the day, we had to make a hard copy of the customer's credit card using that little machine that goes "ca-chunk!" We still have one at the shop for the odd time when the Interac machine goes down, and some of the younger people I work with have to ask "what's that?".
• Lettraset- Before computers, the only way to get any sort of display writing was to use a stencil set or Lettraset. Lettraset was a sheet of rub off letters which you lined up on the page and rubbed off using a popsicle stick. They were an absolute bitch to get straight or perfectly spaced, and it was fantastically impossible. My hand/eye co-ordination was pretty good, so I would do it for my classmates for a price.
• Loading a fountain pen with ink from a bottle- I used to do a lot of calligraphy (because it was still easier to learn that than to use Lettraset), and most of the pens were fountain pens that did not use the little cartridge full of ink, you had to load it from a bottle. I don't even know if you can buy that stuff anymore. You probably shouldn't because, oh, my, even a couple of drops of that stuff made an unbelievable mess. Once I dropped a whole bottle of it, and just about ran away from home.
• Making popcorn with oil on the top of the stove- Before microwaves, making popcorn involved heating oil in a big pot on the stove, adding the popcorn and shaking the bejesus out of the pot until the popping stopped. It took forever, your arms fell off and there was considerable skill involved to pop all the corn, but not burn it at the very last second. It was exhausting.
• Making a carbon copy with real carbon paper- Many an essay had to be typed using messy, smudgy, soul-destroying carbon paper. (I once had someone younger than me ask what did "CC" mean on an e-mail, and I said it stood for "carbon paper" and she asked what that was and I replied "Satan's plaything.") For those of you who have never had to wrestle with carbon paper, it was this black paper you put in behind the page you were typing, and you made an copy while you typed. Of course, getting it properly aligned was impossible, and every single mistake was cast in stone. And? Your fingers would be permanently marked with black, signalling that you were either a typist or a criminal. Or both.
• Adjusting the tracker on a VCR- When VCRs came out they had a little knob called the "tracker" that had to be constantly adjusted in order to get the picture to be viewable. Often several times within the same movie. It was fussy work and quite a job to get it ju--u-u-ust right.
• Use a rotary phone- My children saw one of these at my husband's aunt's house, and they asked where the "talk" button was.

Several skills that I do not possess, but which others do are:

• My brother can develop film in a darkroom. Just try to find anyone who even knows what a darkroom is anymore.
• My father can speak Latin. Very handy in this day and age.
• I had a friend when I was a kid who had two older sisters who went to all sorts of desperate measures to make their hair perfectly flat and straight. (It was the late 60's) This was before blow driers or flat irons, and the two sisters used to actually iron their hair with a clothes iron (wool setting!) to achieve this. The real skill was making sure you didn't leave a dent at the top where you first set the iron down. One of them had a boyfriend who was actually pretty good at this, and they liked for him to do it. He was mortified that he was pressed into service in this manner, let alone good at it, and threatened my friend and I with all sorts of bodily harm if we ever told a single soul.
• my mother knows how to use a ditto machine.

Even if I am the old fart in the room, I'm happy enough to never have to wrestle with at typewriter ribbon or fuss with the tracker on a VCR ever again. Technology does have it's advantages.