“Old” has consistently been “ten years older than me” for some fifty years, now.
When I was in my 20’s, I called into work sick if I felt as bad as I now do every day.
When you used to have a rotary phone. When cashiers rang up your sale on a register and no scanning. sigh.
:D:D Oh God-- that made me laugh right out loud! (71 here)
Yesterday when I ate lunch, I got the senior discount… without asking for it, or even asking if I wanted it. :eek:
I remember eating at the original McDonalds in San Bernardino, CA. Before they put the numbers on the sign.
There are two phrases I find myself saying more and more: “It used to seem so much bigger” and “It doesn’t seem nearly that long ago.” The latter especially. It’s interesting to see it start happening with younger people. I was on a road trip with a group of folks, all just a little over 30. The topic of a suburban school district that our city schools annexed a while ago came up, and I looked up the date. None of them believed that it had been over ten years; they flat out thought I was lying.
A FWB offhandedly mentioned that she got a mailer from AARP the other day. This amused her. “How old do they think I am?” she asked with just a hint of outrage. I pointed out that we would both be 50 in just a few months. You could see the reality hit her.
I have to cringe inwardly when I hear someone mention the 90s, followed by “I know my age is showing” or “I know I’m dating myself.”
I’ve been working at my current place of employment longer than several of my co-workers have been alive.
I’ve posted this before. A co-worker mentioned his age in conversation. I said to him, “when you were born I had already been working here 3 years”.
He looked at me as if I’d just stated I had fought in the Civil War.
mmm
When did Motley Crue become classic rock?
And even that song is now a decade and a half old.
No kidding. Some people are already getting nostalgic about the (early) 2000s. I don’t think so. :dubious:
Everytime I buy a “sharing size” aka King size bag of m&m’s I feel ole because:
I was maybe 4 years old when they first came out and it was me and grandmas habit to go to the store for a candy or maybe one of the ice creams pops from the freezer and wed share a bottle of Faygo together
of course they had a nice corner display box full of them with NEW and BIGGER and such on it and of course to 4 years old me this was heaven… My favorite candy in a bag bigger than i could possibly eat …(everyone says I should feel lucky that I never saw the huge bags they sell these days for baking and such otherwise id of been a diabetic by jr high school)
So my grandma looked them over and said well thats a lot but ok since ill have a few my self …Until WE walked up to pay for it …and they guy behind the counter must of told her how much they were because she got a look on her face and put them back saying they were too much … I was like why ? and then we got into an argument and there were tears and we left without anything
I was still throwing a fit iand saying mean things under my breath 20 minutes later …grandma had went back and gotten them (the store was maybe 200 feet behind the house grandpa sold them the land it was built on because it was the far corner of the yard at one point)
I was so happy …Only reason id gotten them was she felt guilty for saying no because my uncle wanted to borrow money for a pack of cigs and she said yes to him and bought them … and it was the first time id ever thrown a fit about anything ever
Now how much was the pack of M&M’s? 50 cents… And because she always remembered that incident she kept track of how much a king-size bag of m&ms were … Now that same bag is almost 2 bucks at a 7/11 and like a buck-fifty at the grocery store/wal-mart
Ever time I tell a disrespectful youngster “You better be nice to old people because if you are lucky, some day you’ll be one” and I get that look of total disbelief that I know was on my face many times in the 1960’s and 1970’s. “What? Old? Me? NEVER!”
A reminder – or indication, anyway – today. I wanted to refresh my memory about an aspect of the works of the British author H.H. Munro (1870 – 1916), more commonly known by his pseudonym “Saki” – a specialist in black-humour / satirical, short stories. The majority of his characters would seem to be male – could not think off the top of my head, of any female ones. I Googled “Saki female characters”: the entire first page of “hits”, anyway, was about some Japanese manga or anime thing, concerning a bunch of different girls’ schools – Kiyosumi, Achiga, and sundry others. It seemed that those running the search engine, took it for granted that the just-described was well-known to everyone. Not to me – utterly new and unknown to me. I’m in my early seventies: became aware of the Japanese graphic-novels etc., phenomenon, quite some way into my life – by which time I was clearly too old and “square” to take any interest in it.
Adding “H.H. Munro” to Googled words above, quickly got me what I wanted: but left me reflecting that someone such as me, for whom “Saki” means first and foremost the 19th / 20th century British guy as above; is in this day and age, definitely a dinosaur.
Yesterday the thought occurred to me that I’ve been typing for 50 years and I learned to type on a manual typewriter.
Many people today have never used a typewriter and some don’t even know what they are!
I had a conversation with a 20 something yr old woman on Friday. She was stunned - stunned - to learn that I do not own a cell phone. She asked, “How do you get anywhere?”, by which she intended to ask, “How do you find your way to new places if you do not have a GPS application on a cell phone?”
I had to explain about … maps … and that when you put more than one map together in a book, it becomes an “atlas”… that there would be pages for each state of the union and often each major city as well. A person might makes notes before setting off on a journey as reminders of what signs to watch for and so forth.
There were … guidebooks … that would contain lists of hotels and restaurants and possibly recreational activities in various geographical areas.
This is the sort of thing I don’t understand. Okay, she has never had the need to use a map. Fine. But surely she knows what they ARE? She must know that the map graphic she sees in the GPS app on her phone can also be printed on paper? (Unless you were exaggerating for humor?)
Re the previous post: how can you not KNOW what a typewriter is, even if you’ve never used one or seen one in person? I know what a horse and buggy are, what sleeve garters are, what a candlestick phone is, what telegraph and Morse code are, even though they were before my time.
Maybe because I read a lot my whole life, I could easily imagine what life was like in the years, decades, and centuries before I was born. Is that the cause? No exposure through print and entertainment media to a life before computers and cell phones? In the earliest episodes of Law & Order c. 1995, Lenny Briscoe was always running to a pay phone to call the squad room-- can a 20-year-old not even **imagine **that? I’m mystified.
She’s the sort who will just stare at you with an incredulous look. So, I don’t really know if she’s ever seen a printed map. She didn’t say either way. It may have simply never occurred to her that maps would ever be printed - and that people would actively use one for a practical purpose.
That it’s 2020 is starting to sink in. That means that 1970 was 50 years ago. Several interesting things happened in my life in 1970 or around then. All of that is a half century ago and counting.
Oh yeah. We recently passed the 75th anniversary of my conception. :eek: