I was at a rummage sale recently with my daughter and her friend. I was checking out an old badminton set and my daughter and her friend were taking some wild guesses at how old it was.

The original instructions to the game were included in the battered box, so I took them out to see if there was a copyright date, which there wasn’t.

“It’s at least mid 1960’s or earlier,” I announced. “There’s no date so how can you tell that?” my daughter asked. “Just look at the manufacturer’s address.” I remarked.

Both my daughter and her friend studied the address and shrugged. “There’s no zip code or area code,” I said with great authority. I thought they would be so impressed with my tremendous deductive reasoning. Instead, they were stunned about my zip and area code remark.

Then it hit me that these two young ladies, both in their early 30s, have never known a time when zip codes and area codes did not exist.

“How on earth did the mail get where it was supposed to go without a zip code?” my daughter’s friend asked.

I speculated that it was probably due to mail either taking a long time to reach its destination or not getting there at all that prompted the invention of the zip code.

“How did you make a long distance telephone call way back then without an area code?” they inquired.

The way back then remark stung just a little bit, but I went ahead anyway and explained about calling the operator, a real live person, not a recording, and giving her (operators were always women) the state you were calling, the exchange and a 5 digit telephone number.

At this point my daughter and her friend were giving me that “You’re such an old geezer” look.

Undaunted by their patronizing looks, I went on to say that when I was a kid, yes, way back then, the local exchange was Pilgrim, so my telephone number was PIL39219, but locally, you only had to dial the 9219 to make a call.

Ignoring their yawns I went on some more about party lines, ring downs and counting short and long rings to know when it was your telephone that was being called.

When my daughter and her friend’s eyes started glazing over with that look of kids in a boring history class I decided it was time for me to purchase the antiquated badminton set and take my ancient body home.

Once I got home I told my husband of how amazed I was to realize that our own daughter did not remember a time when there were no zip codes or area codes. “Boy,” I said, “That makes me feel so old.”

Henry, who is 14 yeas older than me, didn’t exactly do anything to comfort me. In fact, he told me that just that morning on the radio there was a discussion about the kids who entered college this year.

“Do you realize,” he said, “that the college-bound kids have never known a time without the Internet and e-mail?” They have probably never done a hand-written letter, put it in a envelope and gone to the post office, bought a stamp and mailed it. They probably wonder why post offices exist at all.”

He went on to widen the generation gap by telling me that these kids have never been without video games, CD players, remote controls for everything under the sun or microwave ovens and cell phones.

None of that knowledge did anything to make me feel a whole heck of a lot better. The reality is that time goes on and a tremendous amount of progress can take place in a short period of time and I do think zip codes and area codes are progress and so are cell phones, CD players and remote controls … I guess.

At least my daughter remembers a time before e-mail, and the way I see it, she and her friend can now teach their children that there once was a time, a long time ago, when letters written on paper and mailed in an envelope with a stamp actually got to where they were supposed to go without the benefit of a zip code, computer or cell phone. I guess they will also have to teach their children of the text messaging era what an envelope and stamp are, too.