And he came by this information. . .how, again? 
Ha! I voted for LBJ! Roosevelt was my President.
We need an official snack, to serve at meetings. Ritz crackers and Cheez Whiz?
They’ve been best friends for a long time, and the kid practically lives here. He could also tell you our dress sizes and preferred brand of feminine protection.
Which one?
I too am a fogey. I’ve known for a long time. My kids won’t watch black and white movies (I hold out hope that they will come around) and think the rotary phone (and the electric typewriter) are antiques. I laughed when my then 9 year old son did not know how to dial our old rotary phone.
They think “vinyl” is cool, but don’t want a turntable–they’ll stick with their iPods. They think bottled water is normal and that pay phones are weird. I refuse to cede the car radio to any child–they’ll thank me someday for making them listen to NPR. So, they all wear their iPods in the car with me.
Sometimes I think my generation (supposedly Babyboomer, but I was born in 1962–I really don’t consider myself a boomer) is one that straddles such a cultural divide–kind of like the 1920s where you had old time Victorian values very much present, but also 23 skidoo and flappers and speakeasies etc.
I can remember skirts being required for girls in school and no jeans allowed (public school). I remember MaryJanes and opaques (white knee socks) and even gloves when going out to church etc. I remember when air travel was a luxury and not only were you treated well (instead of like cattle), but people dressed up to fly. I remember lots of things–not all of them superior to today (like girdles for godssake).
I like being a fogey. I don’t much mind the teens today–they seem much the same to me as we were–it’s the 20-somethings that bug me. Still wet behind the ears, but just because you’re 22, you think you know something. You know nothing. Really. Just like when you were 18. You know less nothing and more something than age 18, but it’s not statistically significant. After 25, I consider you an adult.
I think I needed to get that off my chest. I feel great now.
I’m picturing the kid looking for the bras with his cupped hands out in front of him…
I too would like to join, but I’m not giving up current music. You’ll pry my Franz Ferdinand, Justin Timberlake, and k-os from my cold, wrinkled fingers.
How did I miss this post? Must be my old eyes.
I agree with you on the early twenty-somethings. I’m working with a bunch of them, and they’re … different from us. They definitely have some strengths and some very positive things about them, but damn, they aren’t like us. One thing that struck me about them the other day - I was thinking about all the youngsters I work with, and I thought, “The world is going to eat you kids alive.” They know nothing about anything that matters.
(Sorry, eleanor, but you are a Boomer. Very cuspy, though. A post-Boomer, if you like. I was born in 1966 - some would call me a Boomer too, although I don’t feel like I have anything in common with Boomers. Maybe us Post-Boomers should start our own generation. )
Oh, they’re back. They’re called Shapewear now, and contain more spandex then their foremothers, but they’re definitely girdles with a better PR team.
Here’s another thing: when did it become OK to go out in public in pajamas? I see this all the time–it’s always high school or college girls wearing what are obviously pajama bottoms out in public. The girl I saw today at the bagel shop (at 11:30 in the morning) was also wearing her slippers. WTF? To me that’s completely low rent and trashy–put on jeans and a hat like a normal person. 
Oh, gross on the good PR girdle thingies.
I think there’s been a thread or two here about what we 60s babies are–I was about 12 when Vietnam ended, I have no nostalgia for the Lone Ranger or Gene Autry or whoever, I was 10 when the Beatles broke up etc. (not that their music wasn’t great or anything, obviously), but my HS bands were Styx and Dan Fogelberg and the BeeGee’s Saturday Night Fever, not Herman’s Hermits or Mama Cass etc. Woodostock to me is Snoopy’s funny, silent sidekick. I could go on, but I won’t.
Doesn’t matter anyway. To anyone under 30, we’re all fogies.
Wile E, I’ve been to that Target you are talking of. You are right - it’s a mess of inconsiderate and self-absorbed teens, especiall on the weekends.
I’m only 27 and I want dress them down and teach them about manners!
It’s called being a grown-up - there’s no need to “feel old”.
I’m glad you did it.
Dearie me. Oh, dearie me. I feel as though I might swoon. Excuse me while I wipe my brow with this here antimacassar . . .There. Now, where’s my cane? Dagnabit. Where did I put that tarnation cane?
Yeah, you guys are fogeys, but I’m a Crone. I was born a month before D-Day.
No electric in my folks’ house until I was in grade 3. No inside toilet until I was in grade 5. No telephone until about the same time and it wasn’t even a dial phone, it was actually, truly one of those brown boxes on the wall, with a separate receiver. My word. I remember going across the road to see Ed Sullivan on TV, and it wasn’t called The Ed Sullivan Show, it was called “Ed Sullivan’s Toast of the Town.”
And I vividly remember being totally freaked out when I saw Elvis on the Steve Allen show. Gross, was what I thought.
Better stop. Us crones do tend to wander on and on.
I was born while FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) was president; I remember the end of WW2.
I think prospective members should be able to recognize on sight, and detail the differences, between 1949, 1950, & 1951 Fords; same for 1953 & 1954 Chevies. They should also believe absolutely that the 1948 Ford pickup remains the benchmark against which all pickup trucks should be judged.
They should also be willing to swear that they did, at one point, own a 45 RPM recording of “Rock Around The Clock.” Further, they must swear that they always have and always will despise Pat Boone.
Oh my yes. That’s trouble with a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for Pool!
I tried giving some free-swearing pre-teens The Look the other day at the playground, where I had brought my children. It didn’t faze them one bit. I think I still look too young… Or maybe I need to have a cane to have any Fogey Cred. (Or at least a cassette tape Walkman instead of an iPod Nano.)
I’m an Old Fogey and proud of it! Dagnabbit!
My fogey-ism is most intense when I encounter rude people of ANY age. I have nothing to back up my theory that civility is a vanishing trait in the general population. Use of electronic gizmos and gas-powered artifacts seem to intensify humankind’s potential for thoughtlessness.
Well, Louis, there’s me, you and AuntiePam that can meet your criteria, but I think the club is gonna be pretty small. I still have my 45 rpm of “Rock Around the Clock” and there’s nary a Pat Boone record in my collection. Can I be First Assistant to the Enforcer, something cool like that?
My word, there ARE people older than I!!!
Pat Boone. Yes, indeedy.
Does anyone here have the recording of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, the one titled Million Dollar Quartet? On there, Elvis talks about Pat Boone’s song “Don’t Forbid Me” and he allowed as how he thought Pat might have a hit on his hands.
We didn’t have a record player at our house and I confess that even if we had, I hated Rock Around the Clock.
Preferred Harry Lauder singing “Roamin’ in the Gloamin’”. 
whoa, there. I was born in the early Carter years, and I’m a long way from fogeyism, thankyouverymuch. pre-Nixon, maybe, but not pre-Reagan.