My 28-year old grandson believes that modern history began on 9/11 and that nothing much noteworthy happened before that. Seriously.
When I was born, the Civil War was not quite as far in the past as WW I is for a child born today. And I watched the first Moon landing with a man who remembered a time before airplanes (my grandfather).
My grandmother excitedly watched the first Moon landing. She would have been in her mid-teens when the Wright brothers made their flight at Kitty Hawk. She was very impressed by Apollo 11.
Well, I can kind of see how he could think that. Of course it’s not true, but it would seem so to someone who was 10 when 9/11 happened, because it changed so much going forward. Same thing with the JFK assassination, Pearl Harbor and the crash of 1929. Everything changes, very abruptly and to a great degree, and everything on the other side of that dividing line is from another era. If you were too young, or not even born yet, during that earlier era to remember much about it, naturally it seems irrelevant. Especially when that was peacetime and now the country is at war, or that was a time of prosperity and now everyone’s poor, or that was a time of peace and not having to take your shoes off in airports. I doubt teens and young adults in the 1930s knew much about the Gilded Age, either.
Yesterday, Captain of “Captain and Tennille”, died.
And I remember their act well.
When I was younger I knew some older men who had known actual Civil War veterans.
I love these 'links". Where you knew a person who long ago knew a person of a major historical event.
This manwas the last surviving person who witnessed Abraham Lincolns assassination.
I remember perfectly well the Civil War centennial in my childhood. My neighborhood in Phoenix had irrigation for the lawns which meant there was a berm between each yard. Most were less than a foot tall but since the topography had a slight slope to it, a few were more like two-feet high on the downhill side. After looking at all those Matthew Brady photos of soldiers lined up in a trench, the extra high ones became our parapet.
Please, could you tell us that you’re linking to a video that starts automatically? I would like to choose whether I want to see a video, rather than have one forced upon me.
I had a few relatives that were alive during the US Civil war. I met them, I was very young and they were very old, but they remembered the conflict. As Canadians, they played no part. But I heard their stories.
No, I can’t see it.
My bold. “Naturally it seems irrelevant”?? I don’t think so. :dubious: Even as a high schooler (when Kennedy was assassinated) I knew a fair amount about what happened right before I was born and in the years prior to that. Hiroshima? World War II? The New Deal? The Great Depression? World War I? The Spanish flu epidemic that killed 20+ million people? The immigrant waves in the early 20th century (my grandparents were part of that)? I learned about those things in school, on TV, in movies, from listening to my parents.
I certainly didn’t think history began with my generation. I fear that kind of tunnel vision is characteristic of millennials. I hope they outgrow it.
I now have the body of a rock start since Eddie Van Halen, Robert Plant and Peter Gabriel all got fat. 
Funny…I had a Commodore 64 back in the day. I recently put a screenshot of the GEOS operating system for the c64 as the wallpaper for my iPad. My 21-year-old son raised his eyebrows at this. I had to explain that when I was his age, this was the greatest thing ever. 
What gets me about growing old is the interval between two separate events seeming longer when I was young as opposed to now (I’m 54). e.g. we watched The Poseidon Adventure for NYE. My son recognized Gene Hackman from Superman: The Movie. I replied, yeah, this was…and I amazed myself when I realized that it was only six years between TPA and S:TM. Whereas OTOH of all the various Spider-Man films, even the first Sam Raimi one (2002) seems like it came out last year, at best.
10 years ago I swore that I would walk up those final 400 final steps to the top of Saint Pauls Cathedral. Now after experiencing cities where they are designed so that everything is uphill I realise that is long past. My joints and cobblestones are not friends.
The cute baby one of my office mates had when I was in grad school is now 3 years older than I was when he was born.
Plus a whole list of other things, although at age 64 you might be too old for them.
Other people’s children–the ones you don’t see very often–those are the most potent time-warpers. One day they’re starting preschool and the next time you see them, they’re graduating med school.
Yesterday, a young co-worker and I were putting returned merchandise back on the store’s shelves. I told her “You can’t put the chocolate bars back on the shelf. You have to toss them.” She asked why. “Because of the Tylenol scare.”
She did not have a clue what I was talking about. (Google it)
I remember it well. And I think of it every time I open a new bottle of ANYTHING… outer cap sealed in an impenetrable plastic sheath, inner cap sealed with impenetrable foil or heavy cardboard flap. I keep a metal nail file in my pill drawer just to open new bottles. A flamethrower might be useful, too.
And this applies not only to consumables, but to medicinal lotions, gels, creams, etc.
Carl Yastrzemski’s grandson is a professional baseball player? His grandson?
That’s it. I am ancient.
Amen, brother!
I turned 64 this year.
Is this actually still commonplace practice in retail stores?
Yes. It’s a health dept. regulation.
Of course, we can put the item in the break room. Eat it at your own risk/