Children. How about writing Star Trek on a PDP-11 in grad school. (Translating the Ahl Basic version into Pascal.) How about being an expert, not just on punch card machines, but also on paper tape.
I was programming before many of the senior people I work with were born.
I remember watching the original Star Trek episodes on black & white TV when they were first aired (but it’s very vague). Now I’m the same age as Leonard Nimoy was in The Wrath of Khan.
As far as your beard going gray - I’m female and I had to start tweezing my chin hairs a few years ago. Now I have to put my glasses on because my eyesight is that bad and the hairs are white.
I’m only 39, but the tech company where I started working two months ago seems to largely employ people who are under 30. For some reason, both this fact and the fact that I noticed it are making me feel really old these days.
Funny, that’s when I would have thought you knew you were gay. 
I turned 45 yesterday (when the hell did THAT happen? 
) All actual, fairly recent events:
You get carded buying a bottle of wine at the grocery store and the checker looks at your ID and says, “Wow, my MOM was born the same year as you!” :mad: STFU and ring up my stuff, you little fart. 
(and getting carded has become extremely rare…used to happen all the time, up until the last few yrs :()
That baby you had “not so long ago” is in his first year of college. The other you had “recently”, is in 5th grade, almost as tall as you, and growing boobies.
You gradually start to realize that you are now the oldest or one of the oldest among your co-workers. And currently, I am back in school and usually the oldest in the class except for the professor and/or the seniors who audit classes for free just to get out of the house.
That cute, charming much younger guy at the party who chats you up for an hour doesn’t know what VINYL is! (as in “I have this Zepplin album on vinyl.”) Oy vey, he’s an INFANT!!!
Your mother is shockingly old looking/acting and increasingly infirm. 
Your night vision is going and you are starting to hesitate to drive at night if you can avoid it. The bifocals you’ve needed for 3 yrs are one thing, THIS is just bullshit!
You listen to the incoming Republicans blather on about how the rich and corporations are “the job creators” and “trickle down economics” and go, “Oh man, not THIS SHIT again! Do people have NO memory?” :smack:
AND you’re old enough to know who Emily Litella is. 
(Me too).
My chin hairs (another exciting new development in the last few years) are still black, and I hope I can afford electrolosis before they go the way of about 25% of my head hair and turn white! I hear it is much harder then.
Re’ the white beards, my late DH’s facial hair went completely white by age 40, yet the hair on his head and elsewhere had only a small scattering of grey. I’ve seen that a lot with men (greying facial hair earlier than greying head hair) not sure why. My DH blamed it, jokingly, on cunnilingus. If so, I can only say it’s a good trait to look for in a man. 
I always think of a bunch comments to add the next time someone starts one of these threads … then I forget them.
It happens when you get old.
The cashier asks you if you want a bag for your groceries and you reply: “No thanks. I’ll just use the ones under my eyes.”
This one you can indeed blame on memory and not a new batch of dumbasses. Most of the voters and politicians in power were both alive and kicking during the first round of Reaganomics. Now if a majority of those under 40* are gobbling up that stuff, then yeah, you’d have a point, but I both don’t think that they are, and don’t believe it matters too much in the political process – yet.
*I’m 37 and I can remember Reaganomics but only could analyze the futility of it in retrospect rather than firsthand. I assume those a few years older than me would have a better grasp on it the first time around.
So it is either senility setting in among those of us old enough to remember or ignorance among those to young to. OR some combination of both. OR just that many people of whatever age are simply ignorant and/or stupid.
For crap’s sake, you can study what happened leading up to, during and after the Great Depression and see the exact SAME policies and effects involved in both the cause and the solution…ANYONE of ANY age should be capable of learning from history and making the connection.
My late grandmother (1902-2002) said to me, when I was 15 and Reagan was running for office, “If THAT man is elected, I will tell you what is going to happen. The rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, and we will go to war.” I didn’t realize it then, but she summed it up better than most I’ve seen do since, And she was a largely apolitical person…don’t think she voted a day in her life…but she was a working divorced/single mother of 5, second mother to me, Baptist Sunday School teacher for 25 yrs, very bright and funny and non-judgemental. Wonderful lady.
And she had that perspective that only watching historical trends being repeated ad nauseum brings…I have it now myself, to a lesser degree.
Except that didn’t happen or anything close to it during Reagan’s time. Don’t you understand that the rich getting richer doesn’t make the poor get poorer? It was quite the opposite until almost 20 years later. Do you care to elaborate on that? Did you sleep through the late 80’s and 90’s? What does Reagan or Bush the Elder or Clinton have to do with any of this? History and economics do go in cycles but that makes about as much sense as blaming current problems on FDR.
Leaving the economics alone for a while, what war did Reagan get us into? I might be too young to remember his administration (my first datable memories relate to the Gulf War), but I usually have a pretty firm grip on American history.
Reagan waged the “cold war” (quadrupling defense spending…the only reason we won the cold war was that we had more credit than the Soviets…but we both ended up bankrupt) and also the Contra war in Nicaragua (an illegal war for much of the time he waged it). He also oversaw funding for the “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan (aka, the precursors of the radical Muslims we now enjoy as Al Quaeda). We also invaded Grenada under his watch.
Do you consider that “peace”?
And it is indisputable that the rich got richer and the poor (and middle class) got poorer under his watch. Still going on under every Republican administration or Congress to date…the top 5% or less now control over 60% of ALL wealth in the U.S., the largest percentage since the Great Depression, and increasing.
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!
Just the same, I am surprised no one here has mentioned “band printers” or removable hard drives - the original ones!
War and peace are not simple binary opposites. They never have been, but especially not when the Cold War was on. They exist on a continuum, from spying and diplomatic activities to a state of declared war existing between two armies engaged in battle. Reagan’s America stood closer to the ‘peace’ side of the continuum than did Johnson’s America or either of the Bushs’ Americas.
Besides, if you consider the Cold War a single war, then Reagan did not begin it; the most he did was oversee a number of campaigns waged within it.
I am not going to allow myself to be drawn further into hijacking this thread.
Think what you want. I will do the same. K?
Now, what were we talking about? Oh yeah, you know you are older when…
your old clothes come back into style.
nm
Best wishes,
hh
. . . you realize that you’re living in THE! FUTURE! and can compare details of years you’ve lived through with how they were portrayed in sci fi movies and futuristic pop tunes you enjoyed in your youth. 1999, 2000, 2001, 2010 . . .
Many things predicted have not come to pass. And the ones that have come to pass, now seem kind of bleah.
They were only 20 years old when I watched them in the early 60s. Remember “The Old Grey Hare”? Elmer falls asleep and dreams he wakes up in the year 2000. I remember thinking, “Wow, that’s a long time from now!”
That magnifying glass sure does come in handy, doesn’t it?
By some odd chance, for some years I hadn’t needed to look at a street map while driving. One night I needed to (old car, no GPS). I couldn’t read it by the dome light. The next day I went to the drugstore and bought a flat magnifier which I keep with my maps.
Chuck Berry is 84, and he’s still performing. Wow.