Karin Kasdin: Forget The Cake. Let Them See Movies!

I once whined to my grandmother who was 90 years old at the time that the cost of feeding my family was escalating faster than our salaries. To this she replied, "Back in the Depression when I was feeding my family you could buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes for a dime. The trouble was, no one had a dime." That shut me up.

But now I am a grandmother and when my children complain about how expensive it is to live, I would be lying if I gave them a similar response. We always had the dime. We even had the dollar. Sadly, our children will need wheelbarrows of money to live the way we did on a comfortable, but not outrageous income. I'm sure they will all be able to own their own homes and eat well, but the cost of leisure activities will be so high, there is a good chance my grandchildren will be culturally deprived.

We babysat for our precious granddaughter last week and spent a day at the zoo. Admission cost us $78. That's because we passed on the carousel, camel and train rides, each of which has its own surcharge. I should have packed a picnic, but ignorant of the admission price, we bought barely edible cold burgers and hot soda for $30. Needless to say, the diversity of the crowd was pitifully low. The zoo used to be a default trip for our family because the son who only loved sports and the son who only loved music and the son who only loved girls, all loved the zoo. Today, there are millions and millions of children who will never see a zebra close up and that makes me sad.

And what about sports? Most young families would have to mortgage their homes or take out home equity loans in order to afford major league tickets. I've seen old film clips of baseball games. The fans didn't all look rich. They looked clean and well-kempt, but not rich. These days you better hope your team sucks so the ticket prices are lower. And that's only baseball. To score football tickets you not only need a vault full of cash, but the connections to help you nab them.

Theater? Fuggedaboutdit. Even half-price tickets to Broadway shows are beyond the means of the middle class.

Rock concerts? In my youth I saw The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Hermit's Hermits (okay, I was 14, give me a break). The cheapest tickets we could score for the Rolling Stones 50th anniversary tour were $300. See ya' Mick!

This week Steven Speilberg and George Lucas predicted movies will cost between $50-$150 dollars in the not-too-distant future. Movies? Are you kidding me? The family outing of choice? We loved taking our kids to the movies. Okay, I wasn't crazy about The Ninja Turtles, but I sat through it without complaint. Is there nothing left for a family to do together?

Perhaps our entertainment moguls might want to reconsider the real cost of excluding a large portion of our population from 90 minutes of escape from reality.

From what I've learned, the price of a ticket is beans compared to the cost in monetary and human terms of revolution.

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

• Long-Distance Call

  "I remember when I was very young, my family calling me to the phone, excited that we were making a 'long distance' call from our home in New Jersey, all the way to Chicago! I listened to the person on the other end, who sounded like they were at the end of a long tunnel. What a miracle!" - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/wayndom" target="_hplink">Wayndom</a>, 64 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/silevitas/3875833956/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Si Levitas)

• First Computer

  "The first computer I used was a remote terminal that would read the punch cards we fed it, sent the data 200 miles to a mainframe where the data was run and the results were returned, several hours later. The terminal, as primitive as it was occupied an entire classroom." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/slowshot" target="_hplink">Slowshot</a>, 59 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2282601545/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Marcin Wichary)

• Reel-To-Reel Tape Recorder

  "In the mid-60s (my early teens) I was the only person I knew who owned a reel-to-reel tape recorder... and I owned it expressly to record TV show's audio off the air. I still have the recordings actually -- the first Star Trek episodes, The Prisoner episodes... and in 1967 portable audio cassette recorders became available." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/chuxarino" target="_hplink">Chuxarino</a>, 59 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/41002268@N03/4825199407/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Carbon Arc)

• First Video Game

  "The first video game I ever played was Pong." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vwemc/today_im_71_from_a_post_a_week_ago_i_learned_im/" target="_hplink">SOmuch2learn</a>, 71 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22595976@N03/3058462864/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Jimmah82)

• My First Computer Was A Science Fair Project

  "I built my first 'computer' as a science fair project in 1962. It was just a register made from transistor flip-flops, a rotary phone dial for input, and incandescent bulbs for display. I wrote my first program on punched paper tape on a teletype machine connected via 300 bps modem to a timeshare computer. It was in fortran, contained an infinite loop and timed out the CPU at 3 mins. That bug cost me $50, minimum wage was around $1 then." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/anonanon1313" target="_hplink">Anonanon1313</a>, 63 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ppl_ri_images/4020597204/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Providence Public Library)

• TV

  "I remember our first little black-and-white TV, and our first color set several years later, and how much tweaking you had to do to get even crappy green faced images." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/anonanon1313" target="_hplink">Anonanon1313</a>, 63 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jacobwhittaker/6309156354/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Jacob Whittaker)

• From Cassettes To CDs

  "I remember my first cassette player. It had a built-in radio. I taped the Beatles first hits. I remember 8-track car tape decks. I remember the first Walkman (cassette), I bought it in an appliance store. I remember the first CD player, buying it and my first CDs ($17!), and soon after boxing up my collection of over 1,000 LPs and hundreds of cassettes, where they still sit." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/anonanon1313" target="_hplink">Anonanon1313</a>, 63 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/edvvc/200260730/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, edvvc)

• From PCs to MacBook

  "Technology fascinates me. I used PCs for years & now am finding my way around a MacBook Pro. When VCRs came out, I was first in line. Watching movies at home -- unbelievable -- as was using a phone without being limited by the length of the cord. Now I have an iPhone which is really a mini-computer. Love the Internet and trying new apps. I'm excited to see what's next." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/vwemc/today_im_71_from_a_post_a_week_ago_i_learned_im/" target="_hplink">SOmuch2learn</a>, 71 (Photo credit: Getty)

• Two TV Stations

  "We had two TV stations, on a black-and-white TV, but there was always something to watch. Today we have over 100 channels (most in HD), but the same programs that I watched as a kid, 'I Love Lucy,' 'Leave It to Beaver,' 'Andy Griffith,' etc. are still being re-run endlessly, while people complain that there is nothing on worth watching." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/slowshot" target="_hplink">Slowshot</a>, 59 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/photography_and_design/6311451518/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Jonas Merian)

• Film Reels

  "In school, educational films and documentaries came on reels of 16 mm film that ran 15 minutes. Today you get high def blu-rays that run four hours on a 5 1/4" disk." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/slowshot" target="_hplink">Slowshot</a>, 59 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/salvagenation/6166882291/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Salvagenation)

• Computer Class

  "My first introductory computer class about 35 years ago used punch cards for very remedial database programming exercises. It was tedious as all get out, but it gave me a huge foresight into an understanding of the power of data and how to harness that power and manage it to your benefit. A substantial portion of my current job still involves database administration." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/reg-o-matic" target="_hplink">Reg-o-matic</a>, 57 (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/2355797229/" target="_hplink">Image via Flickr</a>, Marcin Wichary)

• Vinyl Records

  "In the late 50s/early 60s stereo recordings and phonographs were just becoming popular. A high quality vinyl record had a max of 45 minutes of music on a double-sided 12" disk. Today you can get 6 hours of music on a thumb drive." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/slowshot" target="_hplink">Slowshot</a>, 59 (Photo credit: AP)

• Computer Tracking

  "Biggest technology wonders in my 52 years, definitely communications. Work has changed dramatically... I started as a medical receptionist and learned an antique, handwritten system for keeping track of the money (in 1979), and the last system I learned was a completely comprehensive computer system that kept track of everything, and I mean EVERYTHING." - <a href="http://www.reddit.com/user/MeliMagick" target="_hplink">MeliMagick</a>, 52

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/karin-kasdin/family-outings-expensive_b_3451153.html

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