My daughter hit me up with an interesting question a few weeks ago, and it's been an ongoing conversation ever since. "Mom, how was it different when you were a kid?"

Of course, my piped up that I drove around in a horse and buggy, and I responded just as smartly that of course, I did, because I grew up on a farm. It got me thinking, though, how different my kids' childhood is from my own.Life was certainly different then, and I'm not sure how much nostalgia colors my view of it being "better" or "worse," but there were certainly some experiences that won't be (and maybe shouldn't be?) duplicated these days and there are others that have gotten better over the years.I spent a lot of time in the back of station wagons. My kids didn't even know what a station wagon was. I explained it was a lot like our SUV, but a car.One of my earliest memories is traveling to a swim meet with my baby sitter, riding in the back of her Country Squire station wagon, holding on to a giant bag of orange slices. Station wagons: conveniently stashing kids and cargo all through the 1970s.A few years later, I was traveling in the back of another station wagon, with about 10 other swim team members, as our coach, while chain smoking, drove about 80 mph to get to a swim meet.Coaches these days spend a lot of time and energy devising team-building activities to bring athletes closer together. I bet none of those teams are as close as we were, as we literally hung on to each other for dear life.If your family didn't have a station wagon, this was your only option. Every time we hit a pothole, someone ran the risk of a concussion. Now, we are limited by the number of seat belts in our vehicle.The cargo area of my SUV is partially filled with spare booster seats rather than kids, and everyone must be properly belted in before we drive anywhere.The improvement in car safety is a no-brainer and I get a knot in my stomach when I think about what a catastrophe it would have been if we had ever been in an accident in one of the clown cars. It has also saved my kids from the endless battles of "shotgun" that my brother and I had while growing up, since no one is allowed in the front seat.My parents ultimately enforced the policy of "coming/going" where one of us got the front seat on the way to a place and the other got to sit there on the way home, but that would never work with three kids.The GPS on my phone is another thing that my kids take for granted.Every vacation used to start with a stop at AAA to pick up a TripTik and my dad would piece together the various state maps to lay out our route. Now, it starts with me Googling the street address of the destination and bringing it up in Maps.We have learned the hard way, on more than one occasion, that Maps is not always right, and it's good to still have my original map and directional skills. Thanks to Cub Scouts and the Wonderful Husband's extreme love of the outdoors, the kids know how to use maps. I think one of these days, we will take a good old-fashioned road trip with one just for kicks.Without a doubt, the single biggest difference between my kids' lives now and my own childhood is the cellphone. Aside from the obvious "we used to have to actually dial phones" and "we used to have to sit in our house, connected to the wall, to talk to people," there is an aspect of the phone that I'm a little jealous about. My kids have access to all the answers in the world at all times.During the Olympic basketball games, the WH and I got talking about the 1992 Original Dream Team. I was pretty sure that Larry Byrd was on it, and the WH was sure he was too old by that time. And, then, of course, the kids said, "Who was Larry Byrd?" We whipped out our phones, Googled Dream Team and Larry Byrd, and a few minutes later, we had our answers.I did have a version of Google growing up, and it was my Uncle Dan. Any time we ran into a question that needed to be answered or a school research project that we needed guidance for, we used our rotary phone to call Uncle Dan. He almost always knew the answer immediately, and then by the time you would drive to his house, he would also have dug up a book for you on the subject at hand.I have fond memories of my dad trying to explain to me that there was a science to map folding so that you could unfold it as your journey progressed, and my kids' memories are going to be of imitating the GPS lady's voice and cracking up at her mispronunciation of all our local town names.My childhood quest for knowledge was defined by how willing I was to endure an Uncle Dan interrogation on my current school work just to find out what year the United Nations was founded.My kids' questions about Larry Byrd led to a discussion of the Boston Garden, which led to a discussion of Boston and has us planning our next road trip.They are certainly growing up in a different environment than I did, but I think their memories are going to be just as good.Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.