My parents have never embraced technology. That’s perfectly acceptable in their Country Time Lemonade crowd, but when their kids were part of the Mountain Dew-Extra Strength Clearasil demographic, it was like totally bogus.

(I channeled my ’80s persona for that last line.)

Some highlights:

By the time my family got cable, MTV was cutting back on videos. When CDs were in stores, our car had an 8-track player. And by the late ’80s, when the first Internet servers were developed and the world discovered Neptune had rings, we still hadn’t discovered the television remote.

Not at our house, anyway. So my brother, sister and I would lie in front of the TV and adjust the channel knob with our feet. We pretty much considered it child abuse, and we would’ve reported it, but our rotary-dial phones weren’t very reliable.

OK, it wasn’t that bad. But here’s perhaps the best example of my parents’ technophobia:

Although camcorders were around during my childhood, most of the video of my adolescence is on filmstrips. My parents’ outdated camera had no zoom, no sound, and indoor filming required a light that could burn retinas.

In every video, family members waved furiously at the camera to make up for the lack of sound. Occasionally, someone would try to mouth some words. In the final years of the silent era, when the teenage kids were allowed to operate the precious piece of technology, our creativity bubbled over into writing words in the dirt with a stick.

Another thing about the videos is that everything seemed to be slightly in fast-forward. Maybe it was because the camera was so old. Or maybe it was because my brother and I damaged the camera by throwing a football at it. (We realized this was risky, but can you tell me a better way to capture stunning images of a ball zooming toward a lens?)

Whatever the reason, everyone has some real pep in their steps in the videos. It’s reminiscent of the footage of Babe Ruth circling the bases like he’d just downed three Red Bulls.

The film was expensive, and each reel only had about 10 minutes of recording time. So my parents limited recording to truly significant events, such as holidays, vacations and giving the dog a bath. There’s also some nice footage of relatives I don’t know, standing in a kitchen, smoking cigarettes.

If I could read lips, I’m sure one person would be saying, “Stop filming me.” That or “My eyes! My eyes! Turn off the light!”

That all being said, I’ll give my parents credit for one thing. They knew when to turn off the camera. A lot of people don’t know when to do that with modern video cameras.

And no, I’m not referring to “adult” home video. I can’t believe your mind even went there. Geez.

I’m talking about overdoing it with family video. For example, when I was at the zoo, I noticed a bunch of parents taking long streams of video of the animals. Just the animals. I understand getting some footage of your kids at the zoo, but until an elephant does a somersault, it’s not worth a replay.

And I admit that I’ve taken video of my kids that I’ll never watch again. At least not in full. Because even with your own kids, there’s only so much “almost about to crawl” video that you can endure.

The problem is, we feel pressure to preserve every memory. That’s why videotapes come in bulk packs and memory cards for still cameras hold enormous amounts of images.

It’s also why we receive e-mails from friends who abuse technology by attaching 100 photos of their vacation, company picnic or kids.

How many of those photos do you look at?

One? Two? If you get to three, you’re more dedicated than most.

That’s why when my next child is born, I’ll take it easy with the video. And with the photos, too. I’ll just send out an e-mail with two or three attached.

And then call my dad and tell him that his photos are coming in the mail. He’s still not so sure about this World Wide Web thing.