They Used to be For Free

Call me "Old School" but what happened to the simple nice time when I was growing up? Why are things becoming so complicated? I remember as a kid watching one channel on the TV that showed plenty of cartoons after school. Yes, cartoons and homework use to be in the mix.

So there were like 13 channels on the dial and maybe only five broadcasted shows, the rest were all snowy, however I never seemed to run out of cartoons to watch. From the classic Looney Toones to Marvel Comics they were all there every day and for free. My family was happy as long as we had one Spanish channel, we would watch "telenovelas" all afternoon.

But TV had a flaw, it had commercials so they invented TV that was commercial free but you had to pay for the service and cable TV was born. I remember when MTV was all music with no commercials, and the VJ's would only give hourly news updates related to music and the artists. Now MTV is not about music anymore and I believe they have commercials if I'm not mistaken.

So now some of us have cable, in my case we have digital cable, which gives us, over 400 channels and sometimes I can spend an hour switching channels without finding anything new to watch. Sometimes paying for cable can be a waste of money and yet we can't live without it anymore.

Now, they are doing the same for radio, apparently what we hear on regular radio is not good enough, now many people are paying for satellite radio. Why? Me I still have cassettes and CDs and regular radio is still OK and best of all it's free.

Don't get me started on cellular phones. I gave mine up about five years ago and I live perfectly happy without it. Definitely a bill I can do without, even though it is more affordable now. Nevertheless it amazes me to see people pay good money to have a certain ring tone, or to text, or to have a personalized screen, or to have some celebrity on your screen. A cell phone if not used properly can be worse than a slot machine.

Yes I know that many of you will challenge me on that one, but hey whatever makes you happy, right?

And then you have to pay for the Internet service; I say this one can be justified as the Internet is without a doubt one of the greatest inventions ever. Oh, and better get cable for the Internet because dial up sucks big time. Nothing opens up or it takes forever.

So what is next, eventually we are going to have to pay even to speak. It is getting to ridiculous. When I moved to Avondale in 2000 it wasn't that crowded but now with the city of Goodyear and Buckeye are growing like wild flowers and it doesn't seem to be an end to the growth. As a result traffic on I-10 is horrible, what used to be a 25-minute commute from home to work is now a cool 1-hour commute. And we still only have the one little freeway for all of us to use.

More cars means more traffic and I read somewhere that a solution is coming. Some cities are creating what high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, where solo drivers pay electronic tolls to use carpool lanes. Denver, Minneapolis and San Diego are already testing the concept.

The carpool lane on I-10 from my house to my work is already a bumper to bumper lane as well, which means that they would have to allocate at least two lanes for carpools but the way I see it pretty soon they will be charging us to use the freeway regardless of what lane is used.

Of all the important FREE things we have now, what do you think is next?

All I know my pocket is not that deep.