So I’m at a poker game earlier tonight and someone folded a 9-5 and called it by its nickname, the “Dolly Parton.” Someone hummed a few bars of the 9 to 5 theme song and someone else asked if anyone had ever seen the movie. I mentioned that I had watched it not too long ago on cable, and that I had seen it in the theatre when it first came out.
You’d have thought I’d said I was at the Crucifixion.
They were amazed, amazed that someone had seen the movie in the theatre. “Didn’t that come out in, like, the 80s?!”
I remember my first time. I was in a checkout line at the grocery store. The sleeze tabloid had a picture of Diana in a bikini. “Wow,” I said out loud, “the Farah Fawcett of the 90’s”. The guy portion of the young faux-grunge couple in front of me turned around and deadpanned, “You mean the Pfizer faucet.” They gave each other not-so-secret rolled eyes at how I could be so stupid.
Possibly, but I don’t think they knew I had glanced at the rag. They just thought I had mispronounced “Pfizer faucet”, which was running lots of ads at the time.
I was only 21 when I had my first “I’m getting old” moment when, after checking a customer’s ID at the convenience store I worked at, I realized people born in 1985 could buy cigarettes and it’s almost up to 1987 now.
I find things like this even more painful when put in context of events I clearly remember as happening “not that long ago”, like this: “In less than three months, infants born after the Unabomber’s bomb in Salt Lake City will be legally able to buy cigarrettes.” Or, “People born the year *Flashdance *came out can legally drink!”
My husband’s freshman college students have never known a world without Pretty in Pink.
Listening to the BBC the music annoucer was going out about the new Band-Aid single and she mentioned that she’d only been 3 when the first one came out.
When we were standing in line at the theater to buy tickets for Peter Pan (the best ignored movie of the last year), a pair of teenagers in front of us pointed at a poster and said, “Starsky and Hutch? Who the hell is that?”
Talking to someone who really, honestly, had never seen a record player in person.
Being called “ma’am” for the first time. Please.
Hearing that three of my boyfriend’s younger coworkers had never even heard of the drink called a Grasshopper. They prefer things like Screaming Orgasm or Sex on the Beach.
How about Gremlins? E.T.? Saw both of those, not in the theatre, but in the drive-thru.
My best friend is 11 years younger than me, so I get a lot of “feel old” moments from her! Remember NYPD Blue, back when Jimmy Smits was still in the cast? She and I were talking about that, and I said I’d been in love with Jimmy Smits since he was on L.A. Law, and she said she never watched that, because it came on after her bedtime! Well, excuse the hell outta me, but I went into freakin’ labor during L.A. Law, and it was after her bedtime?!?!?!?
One time, the two of us were driving down to a town about an hour east of here, and I had the oldies station on (we had taken my car), and I said “I hope you don’t mind the oldies; I know most of them were ‘after your bedtime’”, and she said “No, I like them; my father listens to them all the time”. Aaaaaagggggghhhhh! Really, I’m as close to her mother’s age as I am to hers.
Tell me about it! I’m approaching 50 and doing an undergraduate creative writing class with a bunch of teens in the seminar group whose sole cultural referent appears to be ‘movies since star wars’.
“No, the Scottish did not fight in the Vietnam War, all references to ‘highlands grass’ in my VW story notwithstanding. And while we’re at it - you should damn well know what an M16 is, particularly given the context!”
These were questions from the US students but I think the British ones were just remaining tactfully silent.
Chatting with a friend in a MMORPG, and he mentioned that he was listening to classic rock on the radio.
Being a fan of classic rock, I asked which song was playing.
“Sweet Child of Mine.”
No! No, classic rock is for stuff made by the baby boomers before I was born! It does not include songs that were popular when I was a senior in high school!
I’m TA for a lecture class on American history. Yesterday, the professor asked if anyone remembered the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the students all said, “Well, we were alive, but we don’t remember it.”
A lot of the freshmen in the class were born in 1986! That really makes me feel old.
That classic rock stuff is killing me, too. The stuff they’re playing just isn’t in my mind, classic rock. It’s stuff I grew up with! Led Zeppelin? Okay. Guns N Roses? Not okay.
For the record, I’m almost 31. But goddamn, do I feel old. ALL. THE. TIME.
Definitely. If I inferred correctly, Guns and Roses sang Sweet Child of Mine? I barely know any music after 1980. Except new country music.
I’m an old classic rocker… I was born in 1958. I remember drive-ins! I remember record players! I remember 45’s! I remember lots of stuff that I can’t think of right now!
I get to feel old all the time, thanks to my 18-year-old students.
I’ve learned not to make Monty Python jokes in class, because my students don’t get them. In fact, most of them don’t know who or what Monty Python is. Most of them don’t know about Rocky and Bullwinkle, and many of them remember seeing Ren and Stimpy “when they were little kids.”
I turn 31 this January (the horror! The horror!), and I’m feeling pretty ancient.
