What goes around, comes around

I was just reading Spud Gun's first post and it reminded me of how i got into Photografy nearly 30 years ago. Mum & Dad finally bought me a 35mm fixed Lense Compact Camera when i was about 9 or so Years old. For some reason which i don't quite understand to this day my mother insisted that I only shoot slides.(i still don't quite see the logic in her reasoning as she never offered an explanation as to why and any questions with 'why' in them were usually met with a slap around the head and a "i'm your parent, do not question me,because I know better!) But i digress....when i think back to those days I had no auto exposure, no light meter it was basically point and shoot. Come to think of it the film was a cassette type (35mm cassette). The shutter was fixed and you used a cube Flash (4 Flashes/cube).I then graduated to Mum's Spy Camera... well thats what it looked like only it was about 2.5x the size that James Bond Uses.The Whole Camera is about 13mm thick and again it used a Cassette Magazine. Why did they Buy one of thoses.. Hey, it was the Seventies and it was Cool to have one of those Kodak Cameras. I still have the camera here at home i just don't know Where. And then there was a variant that used a Disk with 12 Exposures (from memory) The Disk was a bit like the disks that you got with the 3D Magic viewers that where all the rage(anyone remember those?) Having said that with by todays Standard Basic Equipment you could and did produce some absolutely Stunning Photografs. Pop the cassette in, wind on, point , hold steady, shoot. And that was about it. You just had to take your chance whith the light. But it was an awfully big Adventure for a 9 year old, and a lot of fun, even when you made mistakes. The excitement was almost unbearable when you took your pictures in to get developed and you were waiting for slides/prints to be returned so you could see what you had achieved. That Magic has been lost to some extend with Digital, but as long as we have Medium format around i think one can recapture some of that Mystique.