Born in the Right Century

My first animated stamp. I don't tend to like animated stamps, but it felt kind of necessary in this case.

I see a lot of stamps around this site with lots of beautiful paintings of victorian ladies laying about in silk dresses with the sentiments... "I was born in the wrong century." Presumably this means that they would rather have been born between 1500 and 1880. I knew a few people like that when I was a kid, too, who wished they'd been born during the middle ages or the Renaissance. They wanted to be knights or maidens. This always struck me as strange long before I understood why and since high school I've been fond of saying that I, too, was born in the wrong century. I should have been born a hundred years from now. Cola = sci fi nerd.

This isn't to disparage those who wish they could be a member of the idle rich. Who doesn't? But longing to have been born when women and non-whites couldn't vote (or in some cases, anyone), black people were slaves or worse, people thought spirits caused illness, 90% of people lived in poverty, with dirt floors and bad teeth, and nearly half of all children died before the age of five seems a little... naive.

I love the fashion sense of the past as much as anyone, but I have no desire to return to a world where people who were not born into wealth could never achieve such a thing. I like living in a time and place where I can get my hands on a tablet and a computer, because these things are not prohibitively expensive for a member of the enormous middle class, and create whatever my heart desires and my skills will allow, and then share it with the world.

The likelihood of having been born into wealth or privilege before 1880 was vanishing small. If you had been born then, you probably wouldn't be spending your days on a fainting couch in front of a dashing young artist's apprentice. You'd more likely be emptying chamber pots. Chamber. Pots.

This modern world is far from perfect, but I prefer it to any that has come before.

Also, video games.

Resources taken from this site include:
[link] [link] [link] [link] [link]

Can't seem to find any similar stamps.