# You Know You're Getting Older When ... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 15, 2010, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202 "2010-12-15T04:37:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/101 "2010-12-17T17:19:59Z")
the first gray pubic hair. Bugged me. the gray in my beard not so much. But, gray body hair=old ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/102 "2010-12-17T17:36:34Z")
> [@dhkendall](#): > > When I was younger, I used the following “handy cheat sheet”: > > WWII veterans were old men, in their 60s I remember a my grandfather and a room full of other WW1 veterans at a VFW party in the late 1970s. They were all ~80 or over but they weren’t even the oldest people in their small town. Again, that’s a room full of WW1 veterans. Today there’s one known surviving U.S. WW1 veteran and if he wanted to talk with other vets he’d have to go to England and hope the other 2 were still capable of talking. My father was one of the last men to become active duty in WW2 (he enlisted on his 18th birthday in August 1945 a few days before the A-bomb; he wanted to enlist earlier but his parents wouldn’t consent). He would be 83 now; his cousin who was a paratrooper in Normandy during D-Day and who never seemed old when I was a kid (though he’d blather on for hours about his damned flowers if you’d let him) died recently at 90 and that’s nearer the age of most remaining WW2 vets. > [@runner pat](#): > > When you can no longer outrun someone half your age. But you can marry somebody less than half your age in any state of the union without parental permission and they probably won’t be the youngest person to get married in that zip code that day. I had an alarming thought when I was about 30 (many years ago) and it occurred “Every dog who was alive when I was born is now dead”. Now that’s been upgraded to include 99.99% of the horses, gorillas in the wild (and 90+% of gorillas in captivity) and 99.9% of the dolphins alive when I was born. Three people I knew very well when I was a kid (one of them until I was in my 20s)- my grandfather (born 1893) and my great-aunts (born 1889)- would today be the world’s oldest living women and men and by a considerable margin. ([Per wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_living_supercentenarians), the oldest verified person currently living is 114 years, 147 days as of today’s date.) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/103 "2010-12-17T17:58:13Z")
If we’re going to talk about old veterans, keep in mind that the last Civil War veterans didn’t die until the 1950s, and the last of the Spanish-American War veterans died in the early 1990s. Now, given that the oldest living person is less than 117 years old, the entirety of the 19th Century is lost to living memory (assuming lasting memories aren’t formed until 7-8 years of age) and is, therefore, very nearly as distant to us as the 16th. ---
**Author:** ![Anne\_Neville](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Anne\_Neville](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anne_Neville)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/104 "2010-12-17T18:22:44Z")
> [@Cat\_Whisperer](#): > > I think you cross some kind of line when you start realizing that you’d rather go home and get a good night’s sleep than stay out and party. I crossed that line a long time ago. The light now leaving that line will not reach me for many years. I remember being 21 and staying home to get some sleep rather than going to a Society of Physics Students Halloween party. I was a little unhappy that I’d missed the party at first, but pretty quickly I came around to realizing that the sleep I got was better. I realize now that taking too many classes that semester really did make me old before my time. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/105 "2010-12-17T18:36:50Z")
I can order off the senior menus at Denny’s and IHOP. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/106 "2010-12-17T19:43:19Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > Hey, I _do_ study ancient history. 😉 I even know about why putting your coffee mug on a printer can be a bad idea, why dropping punch cards can be a worse one, and about the advantages of programming at night. > > I fully expect **Voyager** to win this one, of course; it’s hard to beat someone who remembers The Land Before CMOS. People here started before me - 360s were already 4 years old when I learned how to program. I just worked on some machines that were antiquated even then. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/107 "2010-12-17T19:54:30Z")
> [@not\_alice](#): > > Hate to say it, but I did all that in HS. Except that Pascal was still in the future. And we had 4K for the OS (such as it was), the Basic interpreter, the program, _and_ the data! When was this? Pascal was invented about 1970, long before 4K BASIC interpreters, and the Jensen/Wirth book was about 1971. The Pascal I used was based on a PDP-11 people in my research group wrote themselves. > [@](#): > > Just the same, I am surprised no one here has mentioned “band printers” or removable hard drives - the original ones! And washing machine sized disk drives. In our group each grad student got his own physical disk, which we inserted in the drive before we started to work. I don’t know how big it was, but I never ran out of space. When I was an undergrad, a disk maker did an advertisement saying their quality was so good that they’d ship a defective platter to anyone who wanted one, free. A friend and I got one, and started rolling it down the hallway of the MIT Computer Center - which made the people there very upset for some reason. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/108 "2010-12-17T23:03:43Z")
For some reason, I was remembering the first ball-point pen. It cost $15 (think $150 of today’s wizened, shrunken model) and leaked all over the place and were not legal for signing checks. My beard turned completely white years ago. My grandson is about to get his driver’s license. My wife was one of my doctor’s first patients. Now we are terrified he will retire in a few years. He has sibstantially reduced his practice. The two people who founded my mathematical specialty, whom I knew well, are dead. I have heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure. I take six different prescriptions. Of my eight PhD students, four are retired and two are unemployed house-husbands. Growing old is not for the faint of heart. ---
**Author:** ![Nobody](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/94ad74/32.png) [@Nobody](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nobody)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/109 "2010-12-17T23:11:51Z")
Art Linkletter had a book titled “Old Age is Not for Sissies”. Wikipedia says it came out in 1990. Oh, it also says he died in May of this year at 97 years old. Now that’s OLD! ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2010, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/110 "2010-12-17T23:16:21Z")
**You Know You’re Getting Older When …** The only part of you that’s getting thinner is your hair. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/111 "2010-12-18T04:51:56Z")
…you’re BSing at the gaming store when the subject of the Beatles comes around and you mention that you hate the early Beatles because they were immensely overplayed in the 80s, and someone chimes in in all seriousness “yeah but that makes sense, since their last record was released in 1980”. (To be fair everyone around him even those his age disagreed with him) ---
**Author:** ![BlinkingDuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eada6e/32.png) [@BlinkingDuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlinkingDuck)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/112 "2010-12-18T04:55:17Z")
> [@GESancMan](#): > > I have friends that I went to school with who are grandparents. We’re only 39 years old, for fuck’s sake. :mad: Youngest grandparent I knew became one at 27. Met her when I was teaching. ---
**Author:** ![GESancMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gesancman/32/2923_2.png) [@GESancMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GESancMan)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/113 "2010-12-18T20:13:40Z")
I was just looking through my high school yearbooks. It’s astonishing how young many of the teachers look, considering they were so _old_ back then. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/114 "2010-12-18T20:24:22Z")
I had a somewhat-related discussion with my mom the other day (she’s 67); there are three stage of adulthood - the first is when you buy all the stuff you need to establish a household, the second is when you replace all the stuff you bought because it’s worn out now, and the third is when you start thinking about your stuff outlasting you (also known as the “Not buying green bananas” stage). 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/115 "2010-12-18T20:33:31Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > Have some elder tell you sometime about playing “Star Trek” in high school computer class with a teletypewriter. 🙂 I did that! ---
**Author:** ![KRC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/45deac/32.png) [@KRC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KRC)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/116 "2010-12-18T20:49:37Z")
There was a time when I was a kid that everything shook. When you tell kids that it was just an earthquake and not the third world war then you know your are old. ---
**Author:** ![ratmanizhere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b5ac83/32.png) [@ratmanizhere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ratmanizhere)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/117 "2010-12-18T21:23:08Z")
…the scent of your cologne is Ben-Gay ---
**Author:** ![Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/bc8723/32.png) [@Unauthorized\_Cinnamon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unauthorized_Cinnamon)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2010, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/118 "2010-12-18T21:34:14Z")
. . . it seems like just yesterday that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was a liberal advance in rights for gay people, rather than a pernicious discriminatory policy that must be done away with. (And has been - yay!) ---
**Author:** ![Scubaqueen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c0e974/32.png) [@Scubaqueen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scubaqueen)\ **Post date:** [December 20, 2010, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202/119 "2010-12-20T15:47:34Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > All the cops and doctors you see are clearly younger than you are. no kidding. a couple of weekends ago, i was at the scene of a minor fender-bender (happened right in front of my community theater building roughly a half-hour before curtain. i had to hang around to check for latecomers delayed by the traffic snarl and then decide whether i wanted to raise curtain on time or wait a while.) anyway… i went up to speak to the investigating cop, got a good look at him, and all i could think of (silently, of course 🙂 ), was, ‘does your mother know where you are?’ great og but he was young! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-getting-older-when/564202.md?page=5)