Do You Ever Want to Just Disappear?

Let’s Go Back to the Good Old Days

Childhood home (my photo)

Do you ever want to pull a disappearing act?

I don’t mean Houdini style either. I’m talking about erasing your online presence and then walking off into the sunset.

Yeah, that kind of disappearance.

While the internet world is a very recent place where humans find themselves spending roughly 20% or more of their time, it is a mixed bag of blessings and curses.

I’m old enough to remember life before the internet.

The good old days weren’t as good as people who wax nostalgic might tell you. There were things that I preferred, but also plenty of things I don’t miss. I guess you can’t have it all. Let me give you a few examples.

• People had to call their friends on the phone. Texting, emails, zoom, and facetime didn’t exist. Parents often limited how much time their kids could spend on the phone. Much like parents today who try to put limits on how much time their kids spend online. Long distance calls were rare and considered too expensive.
• We had to either rent movies at the video store or go to a local theater. Otherwise, our choices in the evening were limited to what was playing on a handful of TV stations. If there was nothing good to watch, some of us read books instead.
• When I was raising my children, we could only access three television stations from our house in rural Maine. One of the stations was PBS. My kids spent a lot of time entertaining themselves.
• If we had a flat tire on the road, we didn’t have a cell phone to call someone for help. We usually changed the tire ourselves or someone came along who helped us out. Occasionally, we had to walk to the nearest house and ask a total stranger to make a call for help on their home phone.
• We didn’t have GPS, so we were totally dependent on maps. Sometimes we tried to drive and look at the map at the same time. If we were lucky, we had someone in the passenger’s seat who had the map on their laps to help guide us to our next turn.
• When home computers came along, they were largely glorified typewriters. Very basic games could be played on them. We still thought they were hot shit though.
• We had a set of encyclopedias as our main source of information. You couldn’t google anything back in the day. Sometimes, the information was out of date, depending on how old the encyclopedias were, but families took pride in owning their own set. There were encyclopedia salesmen who went door to door encouraging families to invest in their own personal collection of books. I’m talking about grown men who supported their families as encyclopedia salesmen.
• If I wanted to publish a book, I had to either pay someone to make print versions of my book or I had to send my book to agents who represented writers to publishing companies. Amazon books weren’t available yet. Consequently, publishing companies had the power to determine what was published and what the public would be reading.
• Texting didn’t exist. No quick way to send a message other than maybe a telegram.

It was a different world.

No online dating services, porn, or platforms where I could air my opinion like, well, Medium. Consequently, ordinary people didn’t have a voice. We were silent due to lack of opportunity to be heard by the masses. Most of us never dreamed that we could become influencers, because we couldn’t.

We saved our griping and complaining for our families.

I was a writer back in the day, but much of what I wrote was by hand. Eventually, I had a computer. Nowadays, very few writers prefer to handwrite their first draft. I wouldn’t want to go back to that slow, laborious method.

However, what I sometimes long for is privacy.

I’m a borderline recluse, sort of but not really. Because of the online community, I’m never completely alone. That’s a good thing for shut-ins and invalids, I suspect. No one need ever be completely alone again.

But for me, it’s a definite drain on my nervous system.

Peopling isn’t my favorite way to pass time. Yet, I end up virtually mixing and mingling a lot more than I used to do back in the good-old-days. Plus there’s always the chance that some stranger will steel my identity or even impersonate me.

And, then there’s the nonstop news.

We’re literally bombarded with current events in real time. Not a lot of hope and love in a daily dose of reality. I’m convinced this has elevated anxiety levels across the board.

People are not only anxious and depressed but angry.

All you need to do is read the comments following a news story and the rancor and hostility will overwhelm you. This is the world I live in? I’m surrounded by hate.

Don’t get me wrong. People weren’t any nicer back in the day.

Husbands still beat their wives, wives still drank too much, children were neglected even abused, dogs were abandoned, and people were selfish and greedy. You rarely knew what your neighbor was doing behind closed doors, however. That gave us a false sense of security.

Sheer ignorance kept us feeling artificially safer than we were, and we liked it that way.

Now, there are no secrets. The very behaviors that our parents once punished their children for, being rude and impolite, are now openly displayed by not just the old fart down the road but by presidents. It’s become a sport.

So, sometimes I find myself longing to disappear.

I want to wipe out my online presence, trade my smart phone for a land line, and then tell only a handful of people where they can reach me. I have a feeling that I’d soon discover who my true friends are, too. I betcha my phone wouldn’t ring that often.

Once I left the virtual world, the real world might feel a bit like empty streets at two in the morning.

I’d be forced to turn on the lights and read a book or pick up the phone and apologize to a friend for daring to give them a call without first texting to see if they’re free.

Poof! I’d disappear. I’d be gone, gone, gone. Out of sight, out of mind.

Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.