I turned 58 last week. I was born in 1960, one of the last of the Baby Boomers. When I was 30, 58 seemed old to me; now it seems just the same as 30.

I always find birthdays a good time to reflect. What has changed in those 58 years? What will 50 years in the future look like? It is amazing to think how far technology and advancements have taken us in such a short time, but maybe everyone thinks that when they look back on life.

My mom didn’t have indoor plumbing as a child and she contracted polio when she was 4 years old. Both of these are practically unthinkable now in the United States (sadly, that is not the truth in other countries).

I have a farm magazine dated Oct. 3, 1960, that I picked up simply because it had my birth date on it. One of the headlines on the front of the magazine read: “Should You Send Your Daughter to College?”

Wow. Think about that. In 1960 a national magazine wondered whether women should go to college. Luckily, there was never any doubt in my parents’ minds – they told me from a young age I would be going to college, and do the things they never got to do.

When I was born, no one was allowed in the delivery room with the expectant mother except the doctor and nurses. Fathers and all other relatives were in the waiting room. There are no photos of me coming into the world (for which I have to say, I am grateful). There are no videos of my mom as she gives birth (again, I am grateful for that).

I asked Dad years later if he felt sad he wasn’t in the delivery room, and he said he was glad it was not something men did when I was born.

I was sent home cradled in Mom’s arms, as car seats certainly weren’t a thing when I was born. I doubt there were even seatbelts in the car at that time. Later, my brothers and I would fight over who got to stretch out in the back window of the big-boat 1970s car our parents owned.

Certainly, safety in the vehicle was not what it is now: no air bags, no seatbelts, no common sense that sleeping in the back window of a car would be dangerous during a wreck.

And we all made it through grade school and high school, despite the fact that all of the boys had pocketknives and most of the older ones had shotguns in their pickup trucks. We could have our own medicines on our person or in our lockers.

I don’t think it ever occurred to me to be worried about going to school. Now, I worry about my nieces and nephews when they are in school.

It is the telephone and the internet, though, that I really look at and think about “before” and “after.” There were still party lines when I was a kid. I remember lifting the receiver at my great-grandmother’s house and hearing someone talking.

We had a phone in the house and when I was in college, there was a phone at each end of the floor in the dorms, to be shared by everyone. My senior year in college I took a new course that had the word “computer” in the title. I learned to program “Hangman” in DOS.

Despite not having cell phones, my parents seemed to always know where we were. I lived on a road with only three other families on it. And, by golly, if I did something I shouldn’t, that information would beat me home.

I got phone messages in college via a white board that hung on my dorm room door. I would come back from class to messages like “your mom called.” (Although, it is a wonder any of us got phone messages. No one wanted to be the person to answer the phone. It meant you had to take a message, track down the right dorm room and then leave a message.)

Not having a cell phone did certainly cause some moments of angst that would be avoided now. I spent one month during my senior year in college in New York City for an internship. My parents couldn’t locate me one weekend evening, and by the time I returned to where I was staying, Mom informed me that Dad was packing a suitcase and about to head to the airport to come to New York and find me.

And I was sure the internet would never come anywhere rural. I remember our first computers here at the office that were hooked to the internet. We had to dial into AOL (I miss that sound) and use a phone line that connected to Indianapolis. I would come in to the office at night just to converse on AOL chat groups (I miss those, as well).

Now, I carry a mobile hotspot with me wherever I go, and I get frustrated when I am home in Parke County and can’t get a signal in a few spots.

As long as my health holds out, I think I will live to see cars that drive themselves hitting the roadways as the norm, rather than the unusual. Maybe I can live to see a land speeder like they had in “Star Wars.”

I am still waiting for the “Star Trek” tricorder that a doctor can just pass over my body and tell me exactly what is wrong and how we will repair it. I think I will see food grown in a lab, versus grown in a field.

Whatever I encounter, I am sure it will be fascinating, and I hope to embrace it.