I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in 1983, and am returning to school this year for full-time study after 22 years in the working world. True, I’ll be in a professional faculty where 18-year-olds won’t be, but I remember most things in the given list that they wouldn’t even have a clue about. Still, they’ll be around the campus; and no doubt, I’ll meet a few.
I’ll be a student, but it looks like I may be a teacher too, if any of my younger acquaintances ask. “Jim Bakker? Disgraced TV preacher. Had a show called the PTL Club. He said it stood for Praise The Lord, but most everybody knew it really meant Pass The Loot. Convicted of embezzling, sentenced to jail, got out eventually. American Motors? Car company, known for such models as the Javelin, the Gremlin, and the Pacer.”
“The Pacer? Well, you know the car that John Denver drove in the movie, Oh God?”
“What’s that? John Denver? A movie called Oh God?”
Oh God indeed. Well, maybe they’ll be too busy with studying to bug this old fart about this stuff.
A couple of months ago, SWMBO, The Teenaged Terror and I were having dinner and the conversation got around to music. And SWMBO laughingly said something to the effect that Paul McCartney had been in a little garage band before he was in Wings.
And The Teenaged Terror said (in all seriousness): “Who’s Paul McCartney?”
Agreed, but think of how they’d react when you tell them that once, you actually had to go to the bank during normal banking hours to get money! Or that in the beginning, you had to get out of the car to order your food at McDonalds!
And the worst of all–we used to have to get off the couch to change the channel!!
Recently my international driver’s licence expired and to get a US licence, I had to take a driving test at the DMV. It was a bit of a shock to realize that everyone else waiting to take the test were exactly half my age.
Having worked in academia for nearly the last decade…I always thought the incoming freshman were getting younger and younger. But it wasn’t until they started bringing their laptops to class that I knew I was getting older and older.
What th’?? Life in hell stopped sometime in the very early 90’s, when incoming Beloit freshmen would have been <9. It stopped being funny in the late 80’s. If more than 10% of Beloit freshmen know that Groening had an underground strip before the Simpsons I’d be surprised.
Oh, and for a televised example of the cluelessness of these kids today, check out 70s House on MTV. There are only a couple new episodes left but I’m sure MTV will repeat the whole series sometime. The premise is that a dozen barely-20-somethings live together in a 70s ranch-style house, and everything they do has to be 70s. One by one they get eliminated if they violate the time period. They give periodic quizzes on 70s events to help make eliminations. According to some of these kids, the Bicentennial was in 1972, a Grand Turino is a drink, Led Zepplin sang “Stairway to Kansas” and in 1979 Americans were taken hostage in Canada.
One of many things that makes me feel old is that, when I answer film-related questions on the IMDb messageboards, I notice that many people describe movies from the 1990s as “really old movies.” Lawzee, if something from the 1990s is “really old,” what am I? I’m from the 1940s.
I remember standing in line as a kid, around the side of the theater (one screen in this theater), to see a first-run movie. It was standing room only, but I decided to watch anyway. It was great.
