I saw how much a tonsillectomy cost in 1958, how much my braces set her back. I saw how by the end of the month, the grocery checks got smaller and smaller as the allotment ran out. I also saw, with chagrin, how many times she & ldquo;bailed me out & rdquo; as a young adult, long after I had left home(generosities I had long forgotten). As I laughed and cried over these checks, I was grateful to have this record of my parent's life.
But those days are gone, of course, and now we depend on our cards and electronic banking. Our kids won't read our past by finding a box of old checks after we're gone, but there will be & someone else who will be reading our past, just as surely as they are reading our present. Every time we swipe one of those plastic cards we are making an electronic record of our lives; there are legions of entities that take notice of every move we make. As far as they are concerned, we are basically the sum of our purchases.
Thanks to legislation proposed by State Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto) and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last October, California companies will not be able to force employees to have electronic devices placed under their skin. Great sigh of relief there, but just wait & hellip; that cell phone in your pocket may make all make your cards as antiquated as my mother's collection of cancelled checks.
The headline on this blog is wrong. & It should have read
& ldquo;A Private Life is History & rdquo;
-Citizen Voices blogger Candace Suerstedt is a filmmaker and a mother of three who lives in Coronado.
