My wife and I experienced the same thing, and I was just wondering who else experienced this too.
We’re both in our 30’s. In the 80’s, the 60’s was about 20 years ago, but to us it seemed closer to 40. But when the 2000’s came and the 80’s were 20 some odd years ago but didn’t seem as long ago to us as the 60’s did in the 80’s.
And I’m sure part of it is that we were alive in the 80’s, but not even born yet in the 60’s, but anyway, if you’re in your 30’s, did you experience this as well?
The things that happen to you in your adult years never seem like they happened all that long ago.
the 80’s were my childhood to teen years.
I’m a twenty something not a thirty something but I feel the same way about the seventies, when I wasn’t born yet. It just seems like a “long ago” time. But the 90s–that’s current, man! It’s relevant!
So, yeah, what Scumpup said.
I think that’s what they mean by “Time goes by faster the older you are”.
Some things seem like they happened last week, but it was 15 years ago.
I’m a little older than my 30s, but yeah. The 60s and 70s were my childhood, and a long time ago. The 50s may have been a hundred years ago for all I care. But today is just an extension of the 80s for me.
Probably because that’s when I entered adulthood.
Absolutely. But I’m in my 40’s.
Here’s the way it struck me: in the 70’s when I was a child, we had Happy Days on the TeeVee. Watching that show struck me with distinct feeling of, “holy shit, was it really that way all those years ago?” Happy Days was set barely 20 years previous.
Then we got to the 90’s and we had That 70’s Show and I was struck with the distinct feeling of, “damn, it seems like yesterday that I had that haircut.”
Now we’re in the 2010’s and people are looking back to the 90’s as though it were shrouded in the mists of antiquity where Bill Clinton really did play sax on Arsenio.
All I’m saying is that I’m feeling incredibly old now … so thanks for the OP. Off I go to stir my Mueselix.
Jack Batty, that’s a perfect explanation.
I wonder what my parents thought of Happy Days. I know that they hated Suzie Quatro’s hair style.
Look, if it makes you feel better, I don’t consider somebody to be old until they’re old enough to receive full SSI benefits, and you’re still two to three decades off from that.
And if anybody in their late 60’s or older want’s to complain, well, you ARE old, so get over it 
I think I know what you mean. When I was a kid in the '60’s the 1930’s might have well have been in another century. Now (as **tdn **so eloquently put it), “today is just an extension of the 80s for me.” I have kids asking me now what the ‘70’s was really like, like I’m some damned geezer from the Ice Age or something. (For the record, no, we didn’t all wear Nehru jackets, and, yes, long hair really was a big fricken’ deal to a lot of people).
Maybe I’m clinging to misspent youth (where can I get a refund?), but I think there may be a slight bit of difference to those born pre- and post 1968 (to use a Board member’s demarcation point).
There seems to be a lot more in common with the 70s through the 90s than there was with the previous thirty years, the 40s through the 60s. Parse it in different ways, but the creation/acknowledgement of the teen years as a different type of independence, the gargantuan social upheavals from 50s-era civil rights to 80s+ civil rights to the 2000s is diminishing. I’m certainly not saying there’s been no change or that Seinfeld episodes don’t seem dated, but I dare say the norms and aesthetics of a Leave it to Beaver or I Love Lucy scene differs from sitcoms from the 70s on up much more drastically than a 80s/90s show to today.
And yes, there are a few massive technological things that make watching 80s/90s movies a bit harder (use a cellphone, damnit! Look it up on the ‘net!), but again I think the differences between technology of the 40s/50s and the 80s/90s and the 2000s is a much larger gap.
It’s a matter of proportion. To a twenty year old in 2010, the year 2000 was half a lifetime ago. To a forty year old, 2000 was only a quarter of a lifetime ago. To a sixty year old, 2000 was just a sixth of his lifetime ago.
I’m thinking along similar lines in that life in the 80’s is a lot closer to life in the 2000’s than life in the 60’s was to the 80’s.
this is the main reason…
But it isnt just the gap in technology that makes one decade seem farther away than another–it’s the gap in social attitudes. Remember the phrase “the generation gap” ?
It used to be a real issue…There was a HUGE disconnect between parents and their kids , which disappeared starting in the 1980’s.
Since the 80’s, kids have much less of a gap. You can take your parents to a rock concert; you can let your parents call you, even if you’re at a party
In the 70’s or earlier, a kid would have died from embarrassment in those situations.
Also, part of the whole time going faster as you age phenomenon is that your older memories get bunched up. For example, I could have sworn mom jeans, pegging, and acid wash were 80’s fashion. But lo and behold I was watching a movie from 1992 and there was the clothing!
What never ceases to amaze me is how different the music was in 1968 from 1966. We more or less went from 50’s doo-wop to fully modern rock. That wasn’t over the course of decades, that was in two short years! OK, it wasn’t quite that drastic, but it was close. And look at how hair and clothing styles changed in those years. And that was also when the world went from being black and white to being in color.
Has the world changed since 1968? Sure, but it’s still my world. And changes have been gradual. But pre-1966 was an alternate universe.
That’s my analysis of the situation, too, and I was born in 1973. I think if you dropped me off into 2005, then 2000, then 1995, etc., things would very gradually start becoming different until I went from 1970 to 1965 where it would suddenly feel very foreign.
ETA: I think it’s that way with 20-somethings and teens as well as my 30-something self, with regards to music, at least. Many of them are growing up in such a tolerant atmosphere that has been developing since the mid-90s that the intolerance of the 70s and 80s would seem a shock to them but not to me. But they’d still relate to the music of 1970 way more than 1965.
I was born in 1970, but have been rather well-informed about the 1960s since I was quite young.
I have to agree with the last poster. A lot of things really do happen so much more slooooowly in the last couple of decades. So what if 200 megabyte hard drives were the standard in 1997, and 2 gigabyte hard drives in 2002, or whatever? That’s NOTHING compared to, say, jumping from the Mercury space program to the Apollo one, or from With the Beatles to Revolver, in just a few years. There are rock bands around today I think of as “new” – they sound just the same as when they started, and they haven’t had much output overall – and then I realize they’ve been around for ten years, TWO YEARS LONGER than the entire Beatles career arc! And *Get Yer Ya Yas Out *sounds like it could have been recorded last week (to me), yet 1969 is as close to 2010 as it is to…1928!!! Holy crap!
Well, part of this is that the 60s really were a transformative decade in a lot of ways – many important things really did happen more quickly. Part of it (but only a little part) is the “things don’t seem to change much once you’re an adult” thing mentioned already. But part of it is this:
We are biased by mainly lving in the “Western”, especially English-speaking “Western”, world. I bet if you asked someone from China, or Malaysia, or perhaps Abu Dhabi, they would tell you that “things” have happened very quickly indeed in the last couple of decades.
I’m not in my thirties but I can say a few things about how this oddity of time has affected me. I was born right after WWII and when I learned about it it school it was ancient history. Later in life, when I had a larger perspective of how time is perceived I realized the sociological implications of having a childhood surrounded by people who were just recovering from the trauma of the war and how it colored my life.
Taking it another generation back I’ve reflected on how my parents’ lives were influenced by being raised by a generation of new immigrants.
What I had for breakfast is a dim memory, if one at all. But how I felt in my first pair of bell bottoms is so here and now.
And your memory is correct, AmericanMaid. Pegging, Mom jeans and acid washes were all items popular in the Eighties. Apparently the people who made the film hadn’t lived during the Eighties and are subject to their own time warp problems.
I think there was just less time between 2000 and 2010 than there was between 1990 and 2000. I wonder if we can get some sort of refund.