My MIL’s friend had her granddaughter visit for a weekend. She went home and told her mom, "Grandma makes her own ice!" Remember those? Remember sticking your tongue on them?
When my daughter was in high school her boyfriend commented on my nice collection of vinyl stored in the basement. I had no idea what he was talking about at the time.
I had a younger friend of mine several years ago say, “Did you know Phil Collins was in a band before he went solo?”
I found a wall and immediately started banging my head against it.
When WhyKid was about 4 (7 years ago), we went to one of those annoying rock ‘n’ roll diners. As I was placing our order, he started tugging on my sleeve, “Mom! Mom! Mom!..Look at the big black CDs!” Of course, he was pointing to the jukebox with it’s vintage LP collection.
Last week, he asked me if I’d ever heard of this “really old” band he and his friends just discovered…called Nirvana.
And then I realized which bands were “really old” when I was his age. And that to him, Nirvana is what the Doors were to me.
:smack:
You know you’re getting old when you listen to a new band and say “That sounds just like _______.”
I did that the other day with Franz Ferdinand (who I really like). I found myself saying “They sound exactly like The Cure!” and they do - but only an old person would notice.
One time I bought a Dukes of Hazzard T-shirt in a mall store and the girl who sold it to me didn’t know what the “Dukes of Hazzard” meant. Yipes.
Also if cigarettes cost more than four times as much now as they did when you were a kid, you are old.
When the “new” music you simply don’t get (i.e. rap) suddenly is mainstream, you know you are old.
When we were students, I lived for a while with my mate Geordie Dave in a not particularly nice (but decidedly cheap) area of London. Most evenings we could normally be found drinking in the pub at the end of the street called the Duke of Wellington. It wasn’t the nicest pub in the world in fact, if I can butcher the words of Luke Skywalker for a second, if there’s a bright centre to the pubiverse then the Wellington was the pub it was furthest from. Ask anyone who lived locally about it and they’d all tell you the same thing:
“It’s a shit 'ole – can’t believe you’d even think of going there” they’d probably say. Then laugh and walk off.
About ten minutes later you’d probably realise that they weren’t actually laughing at the pub but at the fact that you’d let them get close enough to thieve your wallet, but hey – it was that kind of area.
As far as we were concerned, though, it was the dogs bollocks of a pub – sure the decor was decidedly pony (the wallpaper was definitely making an attempt to divorce itself from the wall, and several of the chairs were held together with electrical tape) but it had two redeeming features in our eyes – firstly the beer was cheap as chips (which lets face it, is the main priority for any self-respecting student), and secondly…
…it had a Mortal Kombat Arcade machine.
I’ve never understood why, since it wasn’t the kind of pub that attracted the geek crowd. Hell, it wasn’t the kind of pub that attracted any kind of crowd that you could possibly expect to engage in electronic gaming. In fact, you’d have thought that anything promoting any kind of competitive behaviour would have been pretty much a no go in this place from the landlord’s perspective. I mean, come on! He’d had to remove the pool table a couple of months after we started going there because one member of the clientele had taken offence at being 8-balled by another regular and attempted to show his distress by making his opponent take a pool cue rectally, and apparently that wasn’t the first time that had happened either.
All I can think is that maybe the Landlord had picked it up cheap after it had “fallen off the back of the lorry” so to speak, and that, in some kind of fucked up attempt to achieve Pub Feng-Shui, bought it to balance out the evil forces being given out by the fruit machine at the other end of the bar. It certainly wasn’t a money spinner for him as someone had knackered the lock on the coin slot long before we started drinking there (possibly with a pool cue!).
Anyway, sometimes we’d lose the evening to that machine – wiling away the hours drinking cheap pints of Kronenbourg whilst kicking the crap out of each other as ninjas and pissed-off gods of electricity. Other times we’d find ourselves chatting to some of the other regulars or what-not. The lads and lasses in there were a good crew once you got to know them (and more importantly once they got to know you) and we had a good laugh.
One day, we were sitting at a table enjoying a pint and watching the world go by when we realised that we were sat next to one of the guys who we always saw in there, but who we’d never ever spoken to, or indeed even heard speak to anyone apart from the bar staff or landlord to order a drink. It wasn’t that he was unfriendly – he’d always smile and nod at you if he recognised you – just that he seemed to be very much a loner. He was a very old geezer, and walked slowly with the aid of a stick. He was always reasonably well dressed in a well-worn but still respectable suit, and it seemed that his hair had long since given up the battle against baldness and was now nearing the end of a long-fought rearguard action that had left it retreating further and further towards the back of his head. Pretty much the standard “old bloke” that you will see in any pub the length and breadth of this land.
On that particular day we decided to strike up a conversation with him – and pretty soon we were glad that we’d done so as it turned out he was 90 odd years old and had seen some serious stuff in his time. He regaled us with stories about the First World War where he’d lied about his age in order to sign up, and we talked about the first Labour Government, the London Blitz during World War Two and the massive changes that the country had undergone since then. In fact, its probably fair to say that the afternoon we spent chatting in that pub with that frail old man was one of the most interesting afternoons I’ve ever had.
Anyway, eventually we get chatting about the pub itself – turns out he’s been drinking there for over thirty years and has seen it go through some serious changes in that time.
“I tell you one thing,” he says, pointing at the MK machine “you’d never 'ave seen one of those game cabinet things in 'ere back in my time. People would have laughed at you for believing they could ever even exist back then!”
I ask him whether he’s ever played on it and he says that he can honestly say that he hasn’t. Not something that he’s ever tried.
So in the spirit of cross-generation exchange, me and Geordie persuade him to give it a go and whilst I cue up the characters. Geordie explains the concept and the controls.
“Fight!” goes the game, as Sub Zero (under the deft and experienced control of me) faces off against Raiden (under the control of my geriatric challenger).
The fucker beat me four times in a row. Flawless victories twice.
“Sorry boy,” He says, patting me on the shoulder and laughing a laugh that would have put Brain Blessed to shame, “I couldn’t resist! This is one of me favourite games - I’ve got it on me Sega Genesis back 'ome! Now get the drinks in and this time I’ll give you an 'ead start!”
In life, you are only as old as the last video game you mastered. 
I don’t sit down in my comfy chair, I kinda fall into it.
I remember when we got a black & white Motorola TV with the big bakelite knobs (I was about 6), and I discovered the Marx Brothers, Buster Keeton, Harold LLoyd, et. al. (The Mobile Ala. station, which was one of the 2 or 3 we could get, liked to play older, but not at time actually old, movies.)
I remember outhouses.
I’ve been looking for a record player with a 78 RPM setting on it so I can play some of my older records without using the player with the big steel needles.
BTW, our oldest grandkid started college this year. :eek:
I can remember as a pre-teen walking to the drugstore to buy a pack of cigarettes for my dad… for a quarter. And they had no problem selling them to me - they knew full well a kid my age wouldn’t have that kind of money to blow and if I did, I’d have been at the penny candy display.
Oh Bravo for the story! Simply priceless.
I knew I was no longer young when I took the condom out of my wallet.
Even worse, furniture stores have actually become interesting. I guess I’m just a short step from complaining about my bowels.
[ul]
[li]The kids starting college this year were, for the most part, born the year I moved to Atlanta . . . to go to graduate school.[/li][li]London Calling was released almost 25 years ago (1979). That date was closer to the release of “Rock Around the Clock” (1955) than to today’s date.[/li][/ul]
:eek:
:o
Now I really feel old!!!
We could only pull in the DC stations on the TV upstairs in my parent’s room, and only with tin foil wrapped around the rabbit ears.
Never on the one downstairs in the living room.
And of course, this was in the days when you had to GET UP and WALK across the room to change the channels. But there were only four to choose from (FCM, you’re forgetting channel 45, in addition to 2, 13 and 11), so it wasn’t that big a deal. If there wasn’t anything on, we went outside to play.
As for “that sound,” I don’t make it when I sit down, but I do make it when I have to get up. I’m old.
1986? I’d been out of grad school for three years. :eek:
Of everything in this thread to this point, this has made me feel oldest. I first heard this album* in 1980/81, and was so cool because most people in my neck of the woods were still listening to Lynyrd Skynrd or Tom Petty at the time.
Does anyone say “album” anymore?
I was three in 1967. 
If it makes you any better Shibb, i’ve always looked on you as one of the elder statesmen of these boards…
I’ve been valiantly resisting the need for bifocals. I actually got my first pair a little over a year ago, but continued wearing contacts. I consider sunglasses to be a fashion statement, and just hate hate hate hate hate!! wearing my bifocals.
However, the need is just too great. I put in my contacts on Saturday to go to a little neighborhood festival, and had to take them out that night. It’s just not worth it anymore.
When did 45 start broadcasting? I don’t recall it being an option when I was little - not till I was closer to my teens…
I’ll top that. The topic at the dinner table got around to music. SWMBO and I got to talking and Paul McCartney’s name came up. SWMBO cracked a joke about him being in a little garage band before he was in Wings.
The Teenaged Terror looked kinda blank and asked, “Who’s Paul McCartney?” :eek: