This morning we took part in our local Memorial Day parade. At one point, I ran ahead to get a shot of the kids holding the banner of one of our local preschools and right as I took the shot a few of them gleefully screamed out, “DRONE! DROOOOOONE!!!!!”

Sure enough, we all looked up and there was a drone, propellers spinning, eerily hovering hundreds of feet above our heads.

The kids waved and giggled and yelled, “HELLO, DRONE!” I waved, too. Everyone said hello to DRONE!

It was the most welcomed DRONE! in all of downtown Maplewood.

It got me thinking about how much has changed since we were kids, hell, how much has changed in 20 years. These kids can’t be older than 7 years old. But they know what a drone is. Walter is 4. He knows all about drones. We have one. Toby flies ours 450 feet above our heads and gets the most amazing images of our neighborhood. We can even spot the city. Drones are a part of life.

During my run home this morning, I thought about the DRONE! again. And got another chuckle out of the whole thing. But let’s say you rewind time. Let’s say today plays out the same way. Only it’s 1979 and it’s me and I’m surrounded by my friends and our moms and dads and something similar is spotted flying over our heads during a Memorial Day parade? Let’s say that happens? I reckon things would have played out much differently. I think there would be a few different reactions: you’d have the people who would simply run like hell; you’d have the people who would stop and wait for instructions; you’d have the folks who would immediately start to pray; and you’d have the guy who’d shrug and mutter, “I told you. No one listened to me. But I told you.” And that guy would probably follow that up by saying something about the Soviet Union and he’d probably look a lot like my husband only my husband was just 2 at that time.

DRONE!