Wanna feel REALLY old?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It’s time for the annual Beloit College Mindset of incoming freshmen.
A sampling…

-Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.

-They don’t remember when “cut and paste” involved scissors.

-Wayne Gretzky never played for Edmonton.

-They are more familiar with Greg Gumbel than with Bryant Gumbel.

-Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker have never preached on television.

-Condoms have always been advertised on television.

-Pixar has always existed.

I think I’ll lie down now…

2

I was just thinking about the age of college freshmen this morning. See, I work in a college and part of my job is processing these forms of biographical information that the kids fill out. When I first started, they all had birth years in the late-ish 70’s. Then it was the year I graduated from highschool, then colllege, now it’s beyond that. What next? The year of my gall bladder surgery?

Some of the kids here don’t know who Springsteen is. Some don’t remember a president before Clinton. One proposed an “Oldies” dance for orientation featuring 80’s music.

Kill me.

3

To be fair, Liberace died long before he actually died. He was so flamboyant that he was able to pull that off.

And this:

Is akin to Superman flying around the world backwards. Due to the critical mass of syndication, it is now believed that AMF is now predating television.

4

This year, for the first time, the incoming college freshman year was born after i finished high school. I’m starting to feel old.

5

Haven’t heard of the last two. Liberace was a dancer or whatever, and Warhol was probably on TV in the 'States or something.

It was part of the kindergarten curriculum.

Wayne Gretzky always played for Edmonton. Except for that negligible little event at the end of his carreer, but we don’t talk about that.

I don’t know either of them.

Who the hell are they?

No… are they these days?

They’re only a few years old, aren’t they?
– wolfstu, 4th-year university student in Ottawa.

6

Wow, I bet you were pretty scared when they invented the train…

7

The one that really got me is “It has always been possible to walk from England to mainland Europe on dry land.” Good lord, is that something.

8

Hell, when I was a kid, you could walk from Siberia to Alaska on dry land!

rimshot

9

I think they’re starting to have trouble coming up with enough good things for the list every year.

10

That one had me scratching my head, too! I wondered, is this a jab at their geographic abilities? Perhaps it is a reference to the Chunnel? Even that seems like a stretch.

Anyway, hit and miss (I’m 2 years older than these kids). Some of them actually surprised me. The muppets are owned by Disney? Andy Warhol is dead? You are free to mock me on that last one…

11

Bangs head on desk

(Though Warhol would be giggling his platinum-mop-topped head off.)

12

. . . hearing one kid in an Evanston used record store exclaim, “I didn’t know that Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings!”

13

I was born in 1975, and most of these made me want to check right into a retirement home. sigh I went to broadcasting school a couple years ago, and there was a very cute eighteen-year-old boy who had never seen a record player.

But while discussing this with my boss this morning, I came up with one more that made me feel old–The original Star Wars trilogy has always been available if you want to watch it. (I remember being the first family on the block to get a VCR, and being horrendously excited when we found out we could rent it.)

14

In the 1960’s if you used the shortcut through the Marinas Trench it only took 20 mintues!

15

But you could only do it once.

16

Paul who, old man? :smiley:

17

That was just the really early 60’s though, wasn’t it? Not even as late as 1961, I don’t think.

18

And to think … Duran Duran’s “Rio” had already been released, as well.

19

Once, in the 70s, for fifteen minutes.
…this joke was much funnier than it currently appears.

20

It’s okay, man. Let it go.