What will the next 50 years bring?

I wonder if things will change as much in the next 50 years as they have in the past 50. My friends George and Helen Thomas of Seattle in their Christmas letter said these comments were made about happenings in 1957. See how many you remember:

If things keep going the way they are, it's going to be impossible to buy a week's worth of groceries for $20.

If cigarettes keep going up in price, I'm going to quit. A quarter for pack is ridiculous.

Have you seen the new cars coming out next year? It won't be long before $5,000 will only buy a used car.

If they raise the minimum wage to $1, nobody will be able to hire outside help at the store.

Did you hear the post office is thinking about charging a dime just to mail a letter?

When I first started driving who would have thought gas would someday cost 29 cents a gallon? Guess we'd be better off leaving |the car in the garage!

Did you see where some baseball player just signed a contract for $75,000 a year just to play ball? It wouldn't surprise me if someday they'll be making more than the President.

I read the other day where some scientist thinks it's possible to put a man on the moon by the end of the century. They even have some fellows they call astronauts preparing for it down in Texas.

It won't be long before couples are going to have to hire someone to watch their kids so they can both work.

Thank goodness I won't live to see the day when the government takes half our income in taxes. I sometimes wonder if we are electing the best people to Congress.

I'm just afraid the Volkswagen car is going to open the door to a whole lot of foreign business.

I'm afraid to send my kids to the movies any more. Ever since they let Clark Gable get by with saying "damn" in Gone with th(TM)e Wind, it seems every new movie has either "hell" or "damn" in it.

It's too bad things are so tough nowadays. I see where a few married women are having to work to make ends meet.

I never thought I'd see the day all our kitchen appliances would be electric. They are even making electric typewriters now.

No one can afford to be sick any more; $35 a day in the hospital is too much for my blood.

I guess taking a vacation is out of the question nowadays. It costs nearly $15 a night to stay in a hotel.

Speaking of hotels, the Thomases passed along this joke, too:

"This hotel stinks," a guest complained when he showed up at the front desk to check out.

"Oh? What's wrong?" th(c)e clerk asked.

"I got no sleep. Every 15 minutes this loud banging sound woke me up."

The clerk apologized and checked him out. A few minutes later a couple checked out. The clerk asked how their stay was.

"Terrible. The guy in the next room was snoring so loudly that we had to bang on the wall every 15 minutes to wake him up."

And they suggest the new way to teach mathematics:

Ratio of an igloo's circumference to its diameter = Eskimo Pi

2,000 pounds of Chinese soup = Won ton

Time between slipping on a peel and smacking the pavement = 1 bananosecond

453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake

1 kilogram of falling figs = 1 fig Newton

1 millionth of a fish = 1 microfiche