“hey there good looking”
“pretty sneaky sis”
“sorry charley”
“ring around the collar”
“I have a theragram”
“please don’t squeeze the charmin”
the fact that I recently said “ohmygod! Gag me with a spoon” when I saw that my dog had pooped on the carpet and mr baboon expected me to clean it.
That I saw ** dragonblink**'s post about Baby got back and I seriously thought to myself: that’s not that old.
and that I saw Anahita’s post and knew exactly was she was talking about before she mentioned kurtis blow.
the fact that I still havemy first cabbage patch kid… and she still smells like baby powder.
two words: Ballerina Barbie.
I still miss my Lemon Twister.
candies I have loved: zots and razzles
It alwasy freaks me out when I talk to people just a few years younger than me and they’ve never seen the likes of Goonies, Gremlins, or Predator, three of the stapple movies everyone had seen when I was a kid. With all the 80’s and 70’s music ressurgence, being able to recognize music does’t make me feel old (I recognize music from the 50’s, but I was born in 79), but when stapple childhood movies are seen as “before my time” to someone, that really kinda creeps me out.
I recently taught Dr. Strangelove in a freshman English class.
The students, for the most part, hated it – they didn’t see the humor at all, didn’t understand what was being satirized. A quick poll revealed that almost none of them knew anything about the Cold War. Not only didn’t they remember it, they hadn’t studied it in school. I had them do some historical research for the final paper, but their reactions were still … well, odd. (Quite a few of them admired General Turgidson and thought the President was the ultimate bad guy because he was willing to shoot down American planes. If we don’t teach history, I fear we are going to repeat it.)
I’m a 26-year-old grad student, hardly geriatric, so I was rather shocked to discover how big the generation gap was. Wow.
The first sign? A few years ago, back when I was still bartending, I mentioned something that I owned on 45. Everything stops as the other bartenders look at me, and ask what a 45 is. When I explain that it is a very small record, the eighteen year old bartender announces proudly that she’s seen a record player.
I think I aged about 10 years just in that two minutes.
I recently showed my kids my old Merlin that I pulled out of my Dad’s garage. I explained it as a very early Gameboy, and how envious my friends were that I even owned one. They were fascinated for about five minutes, until they realized that the graphics were non-existant.
My kids ask me about my favourite movies when I was a kid, and have a hard time with the concept that I did not have a VCR. They are also horrified to realize that we only had two channels.
I’m also a current college student, and I think I was the only person in my astronomy class who was in high school the last time Halley’s Comet swung by.
Despite it all, I don’t feel all that old yet. My friends make fun of me because I still listen to new music (and I make fun of them for listening to the oldies station all day), I still buy all the new electronic gear (I’m such a gadget-hound), and I still watch new TV programming (I have some friends that don’t watch anything that has new shows currently in production). I bop around to Pink while talking on my cell phone and waiting for the next Buffy episode. And the neighourhood kids all say they wish I was their mom.
Technology has been advancing at such a rapid pace, it’s pretty easy for a very small gap in age to lead to an unproportionately large generation gap.
-Our first VCR was a Betamax
-We had roller skates (roller blades had not been invented yet)
-Pong and Donkey Kong were the games to play!
-The first computer class I took in middle school taught BASIC!
-I have blackmail pictures of me in these ugly pine green polyester bellbottoms and a long-sleeve mud-colored, polyester, pointy-collared top (also a cute pic of my sis dressed up as Wonder Woman for Halloween)
-I had a Donny and Marie lunchbox
Well, one of the things that can sure make you feel old is reading people reminiscing about games they played and music they listened to when they were kids or in high school, and you read this and realize you weren’t listening to those tunes because you were already listening to the old codger music on the classic rock stations by then, and you never played those games, all that stuff came out long after pinball…and so now these distinctively younger people are posting mistily about remembering the good old days and how yet younger people are making them feel old!
OK…
Clackers.
Cheap flexible “records” you could punch out from the back of cereal boxes and play on the record player. Stuff like the ARCHIES.
Making Creepy Crawlers® with glow-in-the-dark Plastigoop
Eating gingerbread made in the Kenner® Easy-Bake oven.
Sitting in the front seat so you could use that little triangle-shaped window flap to make the air go straight into your face.
Using the old postal abbreviations for US states (Fla., N. Mex., Tenn.) back before there were ZIP codes.
Taking the vaccuum tubes out of the TV down to the drug store to test them and maybe buy new ones.
Helping your dad pull the inner tube out of the old tire and tucking it into the new one when he bought a new car tire.
Taking your laundry out to the clothes line to hang it out to dry.
I recently attended graduation for the college where I work and shared with a 27 year old co-worker that Senator Al DeMato spoke at mine and informed us that “you ARE the world, you ARE the children”. She found that rather amusing. I’m not sure if it was because it showed my age or because it was so fucking cheesy.
Thought of a few more (it takes awhile now that I’m old and creaky); remembering when nothing was sealed in stores (tylenol poisoning scare anyone?). Having to replace towels and sheets that I got when I moved out because they’re WORN OUT WITH AGE!!! This one really got to me - it sort of had never occurred to me that I would be re-buying long-lasting stuff for myself throughout my life.
{proving that I’m not completely out to pasture yet hijack}
(lolagranola, do you have the new Pink album? {and there’s another one - I can’t seem to stop myself from still calling them that} We’re thinking about getting it. It should go nicely with our Shakira, Alicia Keyes, Blu Cantrell, and Remy Shand albumsImeancds){/hijack}
We had the ‘fingertip’ rule: your skirt had to be longer than your fingertips when you held your arms at your sides.
Forget computers in school! The first computer I ever used was when I worked, and everything was DOS. I remember when my office upgraded to Win3.1 and how thrilled and excited I was!
Here’s another one: a friend came to visit last month and brought me an Opus doll! I’d never gotten one back in the 80s when they were in the stores. I was so happy when she gave it to me.
I can barely figure out how to work the remote control for the TV/VCR…and yet I built my own computer. Go figure, eh?
Fretful Porpentine:
your amazed that your freshman english class didnt know about the cold war?
hell, im a freshmen at phillips andover, and i know kids who don’t even know who stalin is…see all ive been taught in history is american history, 1492-1870. Not a suprise no one knew strangelove…
o, and people mention listening to classic rock radio and being able to recognize most songs 30 seconds in…i can recognize most songs on ZLX (bostons classic rock station) in less than 15…does that show my age? (15 years old)
I was feeling pretty wretched reading this thread, until I got to FairyChatMom’s post. Whew. Thanks, FCM.
I had eight-tracks. And my first album (on vinyl) was Donny Osmond. Followed shortly by Elton John and David Bowie albums. I also remember Odyssey, a pre-Atari TV-game system that featured Pong. I remember not being allowed to wear slacks in school because only boys wore trousers, and when we were finally allowed to wear pants, they could not be denim “dungarees.” I remember when all the clothes I wore as a child and teenager came BACK into fashion. B&W television, yup, pre-cable, pre-dish. No remote controls - when we got a state-of-the-art TV that did have a remote, the remote had a cord.
I’ve been having age moments since going back to school to get another degree - this time in History. I took a Middle East history class last semester and was one of probably three people in the room (including the professor) who could remember the hostages being released from Iran (as well as a lot of the other historical events associated with the region). I regaled some of my classmates with the following tales:
Tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree… I believe that’s a WWII song (possibly earlier), but they were playing it on the radio in my area the day they released the hostages. I remember getting on my bike and going around the block and seeing yellow crepe paper and ribbons tied to trees.
My best friend’s black poodle had been to the “salon” that day and came back sporting yellow bows around his ears and yellow polish on his claws. Tres chic!
I remember asking another kid on the playground whether he had color TV, because there wouldn’t have been much point in talking about a program unless he’d seen it in color.
A slightly less clear memory is a similar discussion, except that the question was whether the other person had TV at all.
Fuzzier yet (but still definite) is sitting in front of the radio because we didn’t have TV–and we had one of the first in the neighborhood.
(I also recall the test pattern with the Indian head.)
One final nail in the coffin: when I started programming class, we began with wiring EAM (Electronic Acounting Machine) circuit boards.
My sister aced a college class in rock’n’roll history - having five of us older, she was exposed to everything!