Since my discovery of Netflix, I’ve been busy catching up on all those shows from my past, like “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” and “Boy Meets World.” Disney’s “Gargoyles” is in my queue, but one of my recent favorites to watch has been “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”

 

Often, it’s not for the plot so much as for the amusement of checking out the way they dress. Now, I do not profess to be any sort of fashion judge. Ask my friends. Or really anyone who has ever met me. However, watching “Buffy” makes me feel self-confident about my sense of style now, because how could that shirt ever have been popular?

 

My favorite flashback moment came a few weeks ago when Buffy’s team of friends is trying to track down a girl.

 

“Have you Googled her yet?” Willow asks.

 

“Willow! She’s 17” Xander replies.

 

“It’s a search engine.” Willow says.

 

It was a little bit of a shock to remember that once upon a time, “Google” was not a verb, nor was it even a relevant noun in everyday vocabulary. Anymore, nearly every English-speaker would recognize Googling, whether in reference to that particular search engine or any other.

 

On top of that, we have Facebooking, texting, messaging, and Tweeting. We’ve verbed everything possible. Even people who don’t do any of these things are cognizant of their meanings, and our vocabularies keep expanding and bastardizing as we acquire more and more technology and ways to communicate.

 

It’s interesting to look at how much has changed, even in the slightly less than ten years since that “Buffy” episode aired. Did they know how big Google would be at that point? Or how dramatic a change would be effected by technologies? The episodes of college classes have overhead projector carts and people with notebooks. Now, when people need their notebooks, they’re talking about really thin computers. Overhead projectors on carts have been replaced by ceiling projectors, or in some cases some very high end touch screen boards. Blackboards? I haven’t seen any for a long time.

 

But some things haven’t changed. Each class has objectives that are generally nebulous and immeasurable. There are still plenty of things to come up with excuses for. Sure, they have changed from “my dog ate my homework” to “the printer ate my homework” or even “the html text scripting ate my homework,” but in essence, it is the same.

 

Some students study too much, others don’t take it seriously enough, and in the end nothing seems to have changed, until you look at photos (yes those ones where your hair was like “AAAGH”), or watch “Buffy.” And OK, maybe sometimes I do watch “Buffy” for the plot.