I sat in the back of Varmint’s class, watching her teacher work with a Promethean board instead of a chalk board.
And I wondered if any of these kids had ever known the joy of being picked to clean the teacher’s chalkboard erasers…beating them as fast and furiously as you could to make the biggest cloud of chalk EVER.
And then I doubted that any of these kids had ever known the thrill of sniffing a freshly mimeographed page, warm, still from the turning drum of the ditto machine.
And I pitied these kids because they would never know these simple joys and so many others like them.
And then it occurred to me that my grandparents and parents probably felt the same way about change like that. Like my generation never knew the joy of being the first person to arrive at school and hence be the one to get to stoke the fire in the pot-bellied stove.
Or strapping your schoolbooks together with a belt and carrying them over your shoulder that way.
Or carrying your lunch…probably a leftover breakfast biscuit wrapped in a flour sack cloth…in an old tin pail.
And I looked back up at the Promethean Board, and missed my old Wonder Woman lunchbox.
….and they call it progress. Hhhhrumph.
Mama Boe 
Well see, that fits right in with my comment on missing cash registers and dial telephones!
Or watching the teachers get chalky butts from leaning against the chalkboard or scratching, or fighting over who gets to turn the filmstrip projector when the tape goes BEEEP, or going to the AV room to fetch the cart with the overhead projector and transparencies or the movie projector, or learning how to use the card catalog in the library, or sticking cicadas in the manual crank pencil sharpener, or betting Charlie Schultz that he couldn’t eat the entire jar of paste, or using trays in the cafeteria that are plastic, not styrofoam, or discussing “what exactly is really in the Salisbury Steak, because that ain’t no steak!”
LOL. Now they vie for the right to clear the board or take certain “actions” on it. From what I’ve seen, the teachers (at least my daughter’s teachers so far) have been really good at letting the kids work the thing – so they are still getting some interaction with the school equipment. (We have “Smart” boards here – similar animal, different brand.) As to our memories – the chalk dust made me sneeze & my eyes water and the purple/blue mimeograph ink made me break out in hives! HATED those pages!!