I was once the doof who made someone else feel really old.
Other teacher: Remember when MLK was shot?
Me: (no pause for consideration) I wasn’t born yet.
Okay, that officially made me feel Old.
Some other ones:
Having to explain to my 24, 25 and 26 year old friends here at work who the Talking Heads were.
Having to explain to same friends who Oingo Boingo were, keeping in mind that at least two of them are fans of Danny Elfman’s soundtracks.
Realizing that my ex’s big brother whom I just got back in touch with lately, who let us live in his apartment and used to buy us beer and seemed so OLD, is now the same age as my husband.
Computers. I remember clearly my first Gateway computer that my mom bought me when I was 17…it cost something like 1300 bucks, had Windows 3.1, and I had no idea what the internet was, so it was basically a big, expensive paperweight. About a year and 1/2 later, my boyfriend and I signed up with AOL, using one of their discs that had started to come in the mail. You got 10 free hours! :rolleyes:
Cell phones. Where the hell did these damn things come from? I refuse to own one, dammit. I haven’t needed one for the last 29 years, I don’t need one now.
My friend’s daughter, who was a little squawking baby when I first met her, just graduated the 8th grade. :eek:
Yep, I’m old.
Put me with the ‘too many events to mention’ group.
The nostalgic media fuss in 2004 because it was twenty five years since the Clash’s ‘London Calling’ was released.
Grey hair. In several places. I’m saying no more.
Talking to young people who are perfectly intelligent but have problems understanding clock times such as ‘ten past’ and ‘twenty five to’ because they have literally never seen a ‘classic’ watch or clock face with hands. Only digital clocks/watches.
When remakes come out of movies where I remember going to see the ‘original’, and I can’t believe they’d remake something that was made ‘only a few years ago’, and then I realise that the ‘only a few yers ago’ was in fact something like 25-30 years.
Looking at diary stuff concerning events so long ago I literally have no actual recollection of the events described, and only know they happened because they are there in my diary.
Playing something on my guitar and realising I first learned to play it over 20 years ago.
Watching TV nostalgia shows about historical and political events that I can remember ‘like yesterday’, and seeing how grainy and aged the film or video footage looks.
Discovering that if I work out really hard 4 or 5 times a week, and watch my dietary intake really carefully and basically exist on hamster rations, then maybe in a good month I can keep my weight down to only 9 or 10 pounds overweight.
Someone asking me how I learned to do something vaguely skilled, such as fairly slick, speedy operation of some DTP software, and it’s been so long since I learned that skill, and it’s become such second-nature, that I honestly can’t recall the actual learning of that skill at all… it’s lost in the the mists of time.
When I’m browsing in the video/DVD store and I see some movies in the section marked ‘bargain basement, really ancient, almost prehistoric, dead old movies nobody in their right minds would want to actually rent’ and I can vividly recall all the hype and excitement when those movies first came out.
Hearing what was the theme music to Animal Magic with Johnny Morris and being able to recall the series perfectly, even though it hasn’t been on air for at least 35 years (UK reference, ancient BBC kids show)
Realising that I’m now older than my first girlfriend’s father was at the time I went out with her.
Looking along a busy high street and noticing so many things, brand names, types of places and professions that just didn’t exist when I was young. ATMs, nail bars, cell phone accessory stores, internet cafes, plasma TVs, home computer supermarkets, digital camera printers, McDonalds, Starbucks, coffee houses and so on ad infinitum.
A while back, I was talking with some of my fellow graphic artists, and told them that I had been a typesetter for many years. They couldn’t understand that there were people who set type, and that was our entire job, and it was one of the most demanding jobs in the graphics industry. Then I tried to explain to them that in the '70s, we set extremely complicated type without even having a monitor in front of us; it was all done with codes and punched onto paper tape. They thought I was making the whole thing up.
At another time I mentioned that I remember when girls wore poodle skirts. They acted like I was talking about bloomers and bustles.
And yes, there’s nothing worse than white nose hairs.
I have dress shoes that are older than my eldest niece, and wore them to her wedding this last winter.
People who ask obviously too young people questions like that get what they deserve when people answer truthfully. I once had a professor point out in the beginning of a class that most of us were 18 or 19, then asked us what we remembered about Jonestown later on the same class. Most of us had been less than 2 years old at the time, as she herself pointed out, so what answers did she expect? :dubious:
I stopped into a craft store yesterday, more to browse than to buy, and got talking to one of the girls who works there. I mentioned I knitted; she mentioned she was more into stickers and such. I suddenly realized I’d been knitting longer than she’d been alive! :eek:
I also had a bit of a wake up a few years ago. I was at SCA fencing practice when a pleasant looking young man came up. As we started talking and I started flirting, I suddenly realized he was half my age! Oh well, so much for the fantasy.
I explained to two 20-somethings last week:
- what a tape librarian did. had to go over the concept of a mainframe first;
- what microfiche is.
They both went to grad school. I can’t believe they made it through without ever using microfiche in the library.
Ex-Girlfriend: I want to eat.
**Me: ** We can stop up here at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Ex-Girlfried’s 10-year old kid: Oooh! That’s what “KFC” stands for.
The baby-faced Beatle is 64. How the hell did that happen?
If I had had a child when I was the age my father sired me, I would have an eighteen-year-old kid right now.
Just had an interesting occurrence…
As I was reading through this thread, my wife walked through the room. “Oh, the Straight Dope. Whatcha reading?”
“A thread on things that make you feel old,” I replied.
She thought for a moment and then said, “Young people.”
Mentioned to my workfellows, “I’m glad they don’t make kids hold up one finger or two anymore, when they ask to be excused to use the lavatory” – and most of them said they never had to do that, and laughed at the absurdity.
When I happen by someone playing a Nintendo-y game, I’m always blown away by how fantastic the graphics are, and it makes me think of how amazed I was when “Pong” came out. Now, that’s a good thing. It gives me so much hope for the future.
Oh. I’m 53. Seems to be a common age among the posters to this thread.
Oh! No, I’m not. I just turned 52. Where’d THAT come from? (Maybe because it’s the next prime, and 52 is just a boring old 13 x 2 x 2?)
Just yesterday, talking to a co-worker. First I’d completely forgotten who ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964. Then I remembered. Don’t know which made me feel older.
Another item for the list…my baby brother, who was born when I was 16 (hey, if you’d raised a kid like me, you’d have waited a long time before trying again, too)–anyway, my “baby brother” just completed his Masters program.
Well I turned 40 last month, so I already felt old, but …
A couple days ago I was chatting with the pretty, young blonde at work. It turns out she has a second job, and it just so happens that I once worked for the same company. I mentioned this fact, adding, “I think it was … let’s see … 1986.” She looked at me kind of funny, so I asked, “Before you were born?” and she answered, “That’s the year I was born.”
Yes, I’ve been in the same line of work longer than this hot young woman has been alive. I probably attended high school with her parents.
sigh
heh My “baby” sister will turn 30 next year.
I turned 40 in January.
On a Cuyahoga River party cruise I was on Friday night,we were talkling about the music that was playing: pop from the 1980s, mostly. She said something I always felt: “You know, what they’re playing here now is as old as the 1950s doo-wop stuff was when we were growing up in the 1970s.”
I remember how old 1950s-era music sounded in the 1970s. Radio stations called it “oldies” even then. The music of my high school years was now in the same realm as the oldies of my childhood years, relatively speaking.
Today, in many cities, any number of radio stations have a playlist that is fixated on guitar-driven mullet rock from the 1970s. In the 1970s, that would be the equivalent of radio stations playing big band music, which along with the 1001 flutes-stuff, was what the senior citizens and elderly of the time listened to.
Same thing with cars. I still see plenty of cars from the 1970s on the streets of Cleveland. When I was a kid, seeing a car from the 1940s and 1950s – vehicles that looked extremely old to my eyes – was a rare sight.
I get the feeling that the culture of 20 years ago seen from today’s vantage point really doesn’t seem as dated as 1950s culture was when seen in the 1970s.
Another thing I just thought of - around Memorial Day, seeing World War II vets, thinking that these guys look really, really old. When I was a kid, WWII vets didn’t look much older than my father.
Also, every Memorial Day, there will be some news story about how few surviving World War I vets there are, usually accompanied by footage showing a WWI vet, who looks like he’s 147 years old, in his nursing home bed. When I was a kid in the 1970s, WWI vets were everywhere; almost like Korean War vets today. The footage on newscasts in the 1970s showed elderly Spanish-American War veterans.
Also, the keyboard I have attached to my computer was made before the birth date of most kids who graduated from high school this year.
I feel your pain. My “baby sister,” born when I was 14, just finished her Master’s program and is starting in on a Ph.D. She’ll be 25 in July.
And yes, I still call her my “baby sister.” That’s to distinguish her from my “younger sister,” who is 34 and has two kids. Time for a new nomenclature?