You are a modern kid. You probably listen to rock or pop music, wear jeans and graphic T-shirts, and communicate with your friends via phone, text, email, or IM. This is your lifestyle. Now travel back one hundred years into the past. Kids play piano or fiddle for an hour or more every day. Girls wear layer upon layer of petticoats and dresses, even in Summer, while boys wear tight-fitting breeches, rough cotton shirts, and tight-buttoning vests. They often live very close to their friends and only communicate by letters and face-to-face contact. Life now seems a lot easier than back then--and a lot better. But in my opinion it's just about the same.
5:30 AM, 1910
You are woken up by a servant who helps you dress yourself. It takes almost twenty minutes to get dressed, with all the garments you have to wear! You finally finish and head downstairs for a breakfast of gruel--water mixed with wheat and oats. It tastes like wet sawdust.
5:30 AM, 2010
You're sound asleep.
6:30 AM, 1910
You meet your friends outside and walk to school with them. There, you start your day with prayers and penmanship.
6:30 AM, 2010
Your battery-powered alarm clock beeps loudly. You get out of bed and dress yourself in jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. If you're a girl, you do your hair.
7:30 AM, 1910
You've moved onto studying reading, arithmetic, poetry, and history, using a slate and chalk to write on. Then comes art.
7:30 AM, 2010
You eat breakfast--cereal, toast, and fruit--and start school with Math. After Math you go on to History, Geography, Grammar, Science, and Composition.
12:00 AM, 1910
Time for lunch! Some of the kids head home, but you stay in the schoolyard and munch on a potato, a hunk of cheese, a loaf of bread and an apple.
12:00 AM, 2010
You take a break for lunch and chow down on a peanut butter & jelly sandwich with chips and milk from your fridge.
12:30 PM, 1910
School's out! You walk home with your friends.
12:30 PM, 2010
Back to the books for another few hours!
1:30 PM, 1910
You practice music for an hour and a half, with your mother quietly watching as she stitches a sampler.
1:30 PM, 2010
You're still in school.
3:00 PM, 1910
Time for you to go outside (if you're a boy) or work on your sampler (if you're a girl).
3:00 PM, 2010
You're finally finished with school! You do your chores, check your email, and feed your pets. You might browse itunes for that new Jonas Brothers song, or play a quick game on your Wii.
4:00 PM, 1910
A servant helps you get dressed for supper.
4:00 PM, 2010
You head outside to shoot hoops (boys) or text back and forth with your friends on your cell phone (girls).
4:45 PM, 1910
It's time for supper! You eat meat, bread, boiled turnips, and banana bread on fancy china in the dining room with your parents.
4:45 PM, 2010
Your dad gets home from work and you set the table for dinner.
6:00 PM, 1910
A servant cleans up the table while another servant helps you get dressed for bed in rough wool nightclothes. Before you fall asleep, you read the next chapter in your new book, The Secret Garden. It's all the rage in New York.
6:00 PM, 2010
Your family eats dinner together. You might talk about what you studied in school or what you're going to do over Spring Break.
7:00 PM, 1910
You fall asleep on your bed with a wire mattress. It's a little uncomfortable, but your mother says it's good for your spine.
7:00 PM, 2010
You finish the last of your homework and watch a rerun of your favorite TV show. You take a warm shower, slip on cotton pajamas and brush your teeth with a battery-powered toothbrush. You climb into your big, comfy bed and read Twilight or Diary of a Wimpy Kid. You're almost to the fifth chapter! Finally, you fall asleep.Your body needs to rest for another jam-packed day tomorrow.

Yes, some people might say that our life today is better. We have e-mail, phones, cars, TV, and good medicine. But there's also advantages to a slower life with less gadgets. Don't get me wrong, I love air conditioning and digital cameras as much as anyone, but try comparing the crime and pollution levels today to how they used to be. Around the turn of the century, you could look out of your window at night and see a beautiful sky full of stars. These days, you look out your window at night and you see a grayish sky--air pollution--and only a couple of stars if any, because of the blinding street lights. Turn on the news these days and you'll see terrible stories of burglary, war, and worse. Back then there wasn't nearly as much crime. Everything was never pretty and perfect--but it was better. Internet scams these days can cause people to lose enormous amounts of time and money, and people will attack kids just as easily as adults using all kinds of viruses that can sneak themselves onto your computer at the click of a button. None of this was possible back then. We do have lots of things they didn't have--but they had a lot back then that we can never get back. It's best to love our life now, but still appreciate how people used to live then. After all, we can learn a lot from them.