I’m serious. In many ways it seems like it still should be the 1990’s.
I was a young man. Bill Clinton was in office. And the 1970’s were 20 years ago. Yes, that makes sense. Twenty years is a long time. And 20 years ago I was a baby or maybe not even born yet (in the 90’s, i.e.).
But 30 years ago? I can’t accept that. And now 2000 was 20 years ago? I was just there! Y2K. Bush v. Gore. 9-11. Didn’t those things just happen?
Anyone else experiencing what I am?
Its weird Y2K does feel like 20 years ago and I was heavily involved in Y2K work.
But I can’t fathom how 9/11 was 19 years ago already. It still feels much fresher in my mind.
I understand. It seem like yesterday when I was a college student, and now I’m 38 years old. What happened?
My store hires a lot (well, mostly) high school kids so the whole ‘I keep getting older, they stay the same age’ thing is a constant in my life. I started feeling old the first time we hired someone born in 2000. Then even older when we hired someone born post 9/11, and then someone born after I graduated college and so on.
Then, more recently, we had a batch of kids who had no idea what I was referring to when I mentioned the “Patrick Cudahy Fire”. *
My favorite one was when I was talking to two of my employees. One of them had just bought a Fiero. I mentioned that I had only drive a Fiero one time…and then I looked over at the other employee and said ‘and it was your grandma’s car’. Granted, I was very close friends with her mom back in the day so I spent a lot of time at their house. It just felt odd that here’s this 17 year old employee and I used to hang out with her grandparents.
*I know most of you don’t know about the Patrick Cudahy Fire. It was an absolutely enormous fire at a Patrick Cudahy/Smithfield plant here in Cudahy. The fire burned for something like a week, dozens of fire departments showed up, some were asked to help, some of the fire stations from smaller cities that only have one or two structures anywhere near this large, asked if they could come down because they could use the experience for training. There were evacuations due to fears of large scale ammonia leaks. For about a week, this is essentially what the city looked like. The cause ended up being a military flare that someone set off on the 4th of July that he brought back with him after being deployed.
Yeah, just yesterday on one of our conference calls, one of our VPs around my age mentioned how the genetics company we are building software for “reminds him of an old movie Gattaca”.
It seems to me that anyone with children will get that feeling all the time. My youngest kids (twins) will turn twenty next spring. Seems like they were just babies a minute ago!
Mine turns 15 today.
Another thing that always reminds me of my age are any Sporcle quizzes involving music in the past 20 years. 2000-2010 is hit or miss for me. Anything from the last 10, or worse, the last 5 years is almost not worth even attempting.
As a teen (late 60s/early 70s) I couldn’t understand how my mother didn’t know the popular singing groups and songs. After all, they were on the radio all the time!
Heh. Yeah. I know my daughter listened to Hanson and NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys when she was that age. But by that time, I’d pretty much turned into my mother. And today’s music and performers?? I might recognize a few names, but no way I can associate any song to any of them, even if I had happened to have heard one of the songs somewhere.
Meanwhile, half of The Monkees are dead, half of The Beatles are dead, Simon doesn’t sing with Garfunkel any more, Neil Diamond has Parkinson’s… What’cha gonna do?
My daughter, at 14/15 was planning to go to Chicago (from Milwaukee) to see BTS. The extent of my knowledge of BTS is that they’re a k-pop band.
Now, I listen to mostly classic rock, so as a teen (in the 90’s) going to see Tom Petty and CSN and Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd wouldn’t have left my parents clueless. But I assume when they dropped me off at my first concert ever, they were likely unfamiliar with The Smashing Pumpkins. And I doubt they knew who Fiona Apple was and they probably weren’t thrilled about me skipping half a day of school (college) to go see a band called Garbage, though I’m not entirely sure I ever told them about that one.
Sorry to tell you you’re stuck in the wrong decade: the 1980’s are much better.
Apart from that detail: been there, done that, repeated again and again and again and again*…
. * Original soundtrack by the Cure: A Forest. Released 1980, of course 
Other than a few standouts, I’ll take 70’s or 90’s music over 80’s music any day.
And next time, maybe leave some cocaine for the rest of us.
Yep, when I hear about something that happened “30 some years ago” I automatically think of the 70s. It takes my brain an extra second to remember that 1980 was FORTY YEARS AGO.
I’m stuck in the 80’s and I like it that way.
Yes, the thread on John Lennon being shot 40 years ago this week took me back to the fall of my freshman year where me and my roommates had dived into the Beatles collection. Then he got shot on Christmas break.
The 90’s were a great time though. I had hair, was thin and pretty girls were finally taking a notice of me. I also miss those days but I wouldn’t say I’m stuck there. I do still like Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Queensryche compared to bands now a days.
I think you are right about the 70’s, I discovered them mostly in the 80’s and I grew fond of them. But the 90’s? Did they really happen?
PS: The coke you’re looking for is in the cigarette pack besides the ashtray, the one full of joint butts. The quality is not great, but hey…
My parents hated any rock and roll, and would never have listened to it, let alone known the name of the bands.
I didn’t want that “generation gap”, so I made a point of introducing my kids to Authentic Rock n Roll. They reciprocated by playing me “their” music. I ended up taking them to their first concerts (I “had” to take a minivan of their middle school friends to Green Day, and it was THE most fun concert I’ve ever been to).
As a result, it’s hard to remember what music is “my” generation and what’s theirs, and what’s more recent. Time is a long, strange trip…
1990’s, hell. It’s actually 1978. Sometimes it’s 1958.
I’m not sure why this statement reminded me of this, but about a year ago, my daughter and I were going somewhere and Marilyn Manson’s Sweet Dreams was playing. My radio shows a thumbnail for the song so she could see Marilyn Manson as well as the name on the display. I was pleasantly surprised when she said the song sounded familiar and told me it was by the lady with the short orange hair. Clearly, she’s absorbing the music I’m playing when we’re driving.
On June 8, 1966, I was eleven. I was watching “Lost in Space” on a Wednesday evening, and annoyed when the weather service kept breaking in with weather announcements. Then, just before 7:00PM, the tornado sirens went off. This was what would later be called an E-5 tornado, in Topeka, Kansas At the time it was the highest dollar damage tornado ever. Many lives were saved by a young TV announcer, Bill Kurtis, when he encouraged people to seek shelter with “For God’s sake, take cover”. Kurtis went on to a prominent telebision career. And I remember all the details. It doesn’t seem like 54 years, I recall stuff of the days that followed better than I do stuff from just a year ago.
I took my kids to see Green Day as well and, yes, it was a great concert.