Does anyone else remember orange and white high-top Sparks running shoes? They were so cool at one point. How about Friendship pins on your shoelaces?
Sigh.
My daughter (born in 88) once asked me of the turntable on my stereo, “Is that what you used to play Cds on?”
She also asked once if we had television when we were little. I replied, very sarcastically, “Yes, and it was even in COLOUR!” My hubby, 12 years my senior, was very quiet. He remembers their family getting their first TV - black and white, of course.
My sister was born in 1981. Wonder how much of this would make sense to her.
“don’t know what a slide rule looks like or how to use it. Could crack nuts with it.”
::::SHUDDER::::
Not only am I of the last generation of altar boys to memorize the Mass in Latin, I’m probably the last generation that had to use slide rules. When I got my first one, believe it or not, it was easier AND FASTER to use for many computations than the available pocket calculators.
Crack Nuts?!?
I’m going to teach my daughter how to use one. No batteries to go dead, you can use it at night, and it’s sort of arcane. Besides, how else are you gonna visualize the Benford Probabilities?
Anybody got a cane? A couple o months ago I bought a new turn table, Mt eight y/o said whats that? I finally gave up trying to explain it and said it’s like a really big CD
I received this same thing in an e-mail not too long ago and it made me feel ancient!! And I’m only 25! I remember all of this stuff… I especially remember Atari! I used to love to play Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Pac Man!! God, how depressing!
Not a bad list. the record thing is bullshit though. Anyone who listens to hip hop, or scratches, or listens to DJ’s knows what a record is. Most kids have more appreciation for vinyl than 40 year olds.
Found it in the basement of the house I grew up in; adopted it and started to learn how to use it. But that was back in the early 80s. I may still have it around. I hope I do.
Of course I was born in 1969 so a lot of this doesn’t apply to me; I do find it snide and way too patronising. Maybe I’m not as old as I think I am!
I do remember my first year at Georgetown, however. There was some introductory lecture for the School of Languages and Linguistics, and the dean asked how old we were when the Iranian hostage crisis occurred. Kids were saying “four” or “five” and kinda giggling, then yours truly stood up and in a most stentorian manner stated, “Nine”. I got a kick out of that.
This list is old news. I am blown away by it nonetheless. When I consider that I could legally date someone who was born in 1982, it is really strange.
But, I have known for some time that my ideas of what’s current were slipping. When I was nineteen I was a nanny for a very intelligent five year old boy, and one day, in the course of a game we were playing, he was making that alligator-mouth-opening-and-shutting motion with his arms, and I said, “Yeah! Just like Pac-Man.”
You can guess what he said.
That was a stunner. I had to go sit down for a moment.
I’ve been trying to get used to my own growing obsolesence ever since. Actually, what I’ve been trying to do is vibrate on a more timeless frequency. I think of it this way: there are way, way, way more people in the world who don’t understand why baggy jeans hanging off your ass are cool, than who do.
Ah yes, I remember the days when we had only two television channels, no V.C.R., no 8 tracks, no personal computers, or video game systems. Cigarettes were under $2 a pack, bread was 10 loaves for a dollar, and 10 pounds of bananas cost you the same as the bread. Penny candy was actually two and sometimes three for a penny.
I could go to the Saturday afternoon matinee with seventy five cents in my pocket and have enough left over after the admission price to get completely buzzed on sugar.
I am sitting here now just waiting to take the guys to see X-men, perhaps they will find some heroes to replace those infernal and all too pervasive Pokemon. The guys are pretty excited to be going to the movies, they are sitting on the couch with their game boys, counting the Pokemon they have aquired while they watch the 24 hour cartoon channel.
I don’t feel old because I remember or know about so many past things. I try to impress upon our children the times that have passed and how things used to be. They shudder to think of a time when there was no such thing as a VCR or a Nintendo. I am taking them camping this summer, I wonder if they will be able to hack it with no modern conveniences… they won’t be taking the game boys with them, that I know for sure.
Oh my trusted slide rule! It has been with me through thick and thin, always faithful. I am going to take a picture of it and put it up on my web site.
I remember asking my grandmother if she’d ever seen a dinosaur. She answered “No.”
Past generations are always a mystery to the young. It’s better if you develop a respect for what they did accomplish than it is to laugh at how “backwards” they were. After all, if it hadn’t been for vacuum tube technology, we’d never have developed transistors, then circuit cards, microcircuits, then microchips.
Our society is as advanced as it is precisely because someone (usually many someones) said: “Hey! I can do better than this!”
If there had never been one before, could you have invented the astrolabe, the lateen sail, gunpowder, or anaesthetic? I don’t think so. Why laugh then? You didn’t invent all the wonderful things you’ve come to rely on, so why do you think it’s laughable that others had to wait for them to be invented?
My students ask if I was a hippy in the 60’s. I try to explain to them that I was a toddler in the 60’s, but they only seem to have a single definition for onl person.
I loved my Atari, especially Pitfall. I just recently bought Atari’s Greatest Hits (20 Atari games) for my Playstation and tried to play these old games again. Here I am with a controller with about 20 buttons, analog or digital control, dual shock capabilities, rapid fire, slow motion, non-slip grip, instant replay, digital read-outs of all the different timezones, built in Swiss army knife, a compass, and a cup holder trying to play games designed for a controller that consisted of a joystick and one button. I found it very difficult to believe I used to play these games non-stop.
But I do recognize and have had experience with almost everything else on the list.
I was born in 1977 to immigrant parents who were very religious. And also poor. Which may explain some of my familiarity with that stuff. My three younger siblings (the youngest was born in 1982) have pretty much the same exposure to that list as I do. But we read books and newspapers. And we talk to our parents. Which doesn’t mean there is no such thing as a generation gap… but its’ not as scary and vast as people try to make it sound with that list.
If you know younger people, instead of assuming that they are clueless and completely disconnected from you, try having a mutually respectful conversation with them. And if they say the dreaded words, “What’s (insert past popular item or major historical happening)” just tell them what it is. 'Cause if you gasp, or roll yr eyes, or withdraw or seem righteously indignant that they don’t know (people have done this to me) then you will be widening the percieved gap even further. Was that too preachy? This is only my third post maybe I’m getting high on the power.