I wrote this on another forum, you’re not the only person feeling that way…what I’ve noticed is: You young for a little bit, but old for a LONG time.
I had to do some math. Found I was near my trusty calculator and did some subtraction.
I have an HP-48…had it in college. It was a kickass superdeduper handheld computer. It would graph, do matrix calculations, write equations all pretty like. It was my LIFELINE in College taking my engineering courses.
I left college and used it occasionally for balancing my checkbook. Now it gathers dust. Funny thing is though, I remember sliderules, and the first new LED calculators. This thing was like comparing a fuckin NFL linebacker to a member of the AV club. It was so far beyond what those early calculators could do it wasn’t even funny.
I’ve had that thing for 15 years. They don’t really even MAKE calculators like this anymore…it’s an irrelevant technology. My kids will look at it like it’s one of those ‘old things Dad has’.
The week my kids were born, I looked around the house and all the neat cool stuff (the TV, the computer, the carpet…that Microwave we bought new just a little bit ago) will be categorized by my kids as ‘old stuff’. Cuz that’s what I did when I was a kid. Things fit in two categories: New stuff (star Wars collector cards) and Old Stuff (Dad’s Tie tacks, the belt buckle with the Johnson Silver Dollar in it.)
When I was a kid, I remember going upstairs to watch the Black n White TV…I knew it wasn’t as good as the TV in the living room (cuz, you know, it’s not in color) But I never thought that once that was the coolest TV in the house (Heck, the ONLY TV in the house) I’ve been around long enough to have a progression of TV’s in the house.
The 1978 Crap Zenith in the guest bedroom with the bad color got pitched when Grandpa passed away…8 months after we got his TV, we discovered it was crap too…but if you’re old, and your vision sucks, and the TV never gets turned off, you don’t notice it takes 20 minutes to warm up.
So we got the new whizzy HTDV in the livingroom, and the 12 year old (christ! 12 years?) 48" Toshiba got wedged into the guest bedroom…Gramp’s TV got pitched…And my kids will think that BIG REAR PROJECTION Toshiba…the one my fiancee and I bought as our first real purchase together, is an old piece of shit. I guess some folks just stack the new TV on the old one when it dies. You can map out their personal history on how many TVs are on the pile.
I’ve outlived records, 8 tracks, cassettes, VHS, CD’s and DVD’s are on life support.
And as hard as it is to believe, that iPhone is gonna look like outdated shit at some point in time. That THAT will just make me feel older.