# You know you're old when... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 24, 2008, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343 "2008-10-24T13:33:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![beanpod](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9adbd/32.png) [@beanpod](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beanpod)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/41 "2008-10-24T20:31:22Z")
[QUOTE=Mahaloth] I remember seeing a rotary phone when I was a kid(around 1984) at the local YMCA and thinking it’s old. The lady had to show me how to use it. [/QUOTE] Huh. Maybe my grandparents just liked theirs. That’s really surprising. I assumed people over, say, 23 would have at least seen one and played with one. I’m 25, and I had regular access to one when I was a kid–I assumed anyone older than me would have at least had older relatives with them. ---
**Author:** ![neutron\_star](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/51bf81/32.png) [@neutron\_star](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neutron_star)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/42 "2008-10-24T20:31:18Z")
> [@KneadToKnow](#): > > People in high school _now_? Not even close. I’m 40 and I’ve never in my memory lived in a house with a rotary phone. I’m 30 and we had a couple of them in my house until I was about 10. ---
**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:** [October 24, 2008, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/43 "2008-10-24T20:32:00Z")
But the re-dialing to try to get concert tickets off a radio station - that was sheer hell. (41, and we had a couple of rotary phones. Heck, I had one myself for the longest time.) My old fart revelation came a couple of years ago, when I had to start replacing things I had bought for the house (sheets, towels, toaster, etc.) I still think I’m in set up a household mode, and here I am in replace worn out things for my household. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/44 "2008-10-24T20:58:22Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > But the re-dialing to try to get concert tickets off a radio station - that was sheer hell… As I remember it, the way to work some of the old phone on radio give aways was to predial except for the last digit. Keep that one at the top of the finger pull and when the announcer said, “And now…” you released the number. Sometimes it worked. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/45 "2008-10-24T21:16:35Z")
> [@Susie\_Derkins](#): > > Plus it’s much more satisfying to hang up on someone when you’re using the old, heavy phones. What do angsty teenagers do nowadays, angrily jab the “end” button? Flip the phone shut, testily? I’m old enough to remember Jerry Seinfeld making this joke about portable phones 15 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/46 "2008-10-24T21:17:53Z")
> [@Lord\_Ashtar](#): > > I’m old enough to remember Jerry Seinfeld making this joke about portable phones 15 years ago. Dude, you’re _old_. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Jake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/f475e1/32.png) [@Jake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jake)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/47 "2008-10-24T21:25:45Z")
I wanna hear more about this dude tying up his girlfriend. a LOT more!😉 ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/48 "2008-10-24T21:32:15Z")
If you’re on LJ, friend me. Eventually you’ll work your way in to my “insiders” group that gets to read those posts. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Woo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Woo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Woo)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/49 "2008-10-24T21:33:13Z")
> [@twickster](#): > > I just had a moment of complete panic that I’d mislaid my computer reading glasses (as opposed to the other half dozen pairs in the house). They weren’t on my head or tucked into the neck of my sweatshirt. > > Thank god I realized they were on my nose before I tore the house apart. Heh. I have a big ol’ scratch on my forehead from peeling my t-shirt off without removing my glasses. You KNOW why I didn’t remove my glasses, right? ---
**Author:** ![Susie\_Derkins](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e47774/32.png) [@Susie\_Derkins](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susie_Derkins)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/50 "2008-10-24T21:43:44Z")
> [@Lord\_Ashtar](#): > > I’m old enough to remember Jerry Seinfeld making this joke about portable phones 15 years ago. I’m so old that I forgot he made that joke. The flipping it shut part was all me, though. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/51 "2008-10-24T21:49:52Z")
Last week I, again, lost track of my glasses. As I was looking for them I tried to make sure I hadn’t done something really stupid. That led to this laughing comment from my daughter: “Mom, did you just feel the top of your head?” I’ve taken to doing that, just to try not to make a complete fool of myself running around the house looking for something that’s right there riding around with me. And the really goofy part of it is, I almost never put them up there. They get caught in my hair. But I remember my mother. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/52 "2008-10-24T21:53:41Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > My kids saw part of _Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure_ the other day and they loved it. Especially the time-traveling phone booth. It was wild how they came up with the idea of having the time traveling device be a pay phone, but it had to be crammed into this little box to take people places! > > The fact that a phone booth was meant to evoke a modern, everyday thing (incongruously juxtaposed into historical places and times) was lost on them – for them, the idea of a “phone booth” was just another bit of surrealism. You realize, of course, that in twenty years, the pay phone itself will have gone completely by the wayside, and will have as much relevance to modern day-to-day life as stegosaurus bait, and that it will be an example of the weird stuff your children will be telling _their_ kids they saw when they were young. ---
**Author:** ![whiterabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/cab0a1/32.png) [@whiterabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whiterabbit)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2008, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/53 "2008-10-24T23:28:16Z")
My dad said his moment was when they started playing Metamucil ads on the radio stations he liked. The scary part is he couldn’t have been more than a few years older than I am now when that happened. _sigh_ I miss him. I don’t remember having a rotary phone but I remember using them a few times. I’m 32. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/54 "2008-10-25T00:03:57Z")
_I_ have an analog watch. I’m rather fond of it. Paid quite a bit of dough for it when on a cruise in the Carribean. Course, the hands are attached to stepper motors and it does a TON of stuff, but it’s still analog. Hmmm. Old. I was young a little bit, but I’ll be old a Loooooooong time. Examples: -listening to the coffee girls go through the trails and tirbulations of dating in your twenties. Girl, when you’re talking about a guy and you _squeak_…that’s called a ‘tell’, if he’s been aroudn the block a time or two, he’ll _know_. -realizing that the black an white TV you watched in your parents bedroom as a kid was one of a _progression_ of TV’s, with the newest one being in the family room, the next oldest in the Parents bedroom and the next oldest being in your room (or the guest room). Our house now has three generations of primary TVs, sent out to pasture. I’ve learned how to machine metal on a 1962 South Bend Lathe. I read about the processes’ in the definitive ‘How to Run a Lathe’, published in 1944. The first edition was published in 1912. Old people on olden days knew some pretty cool stuff. -My 5 year old son says ‘I know millions and MILLIONS of songs’. I ask ‘How many IS that, exactly?’ He says ‘sixty’. ---
**Author:** ![LouisB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dfb087/32.png) [@LouisB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LouisB)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/55 "2008-10-25T00:07:41Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > When the young woman I find really cute makes a point of mentioning her father’s age, and it is younger than I am. Wait until they start mentioning their grandfather’s age and he is younger than you. That stings. ---
**Author:** ![3acresandatruck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/e79b87/32.png) [@3acresandatruck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3acresandatruck)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/56 "2008-10-25T01:12:28Z")
I’m not old yet, but I’ve got a good start on it. At home we had one black phone with a dial permanently wired to the wall for our party line. You might pick up the phone to make a call and the other person would be using it, but for us it was rare. Dad’s desk phone at work was so old that the ringer was in a separate box mounted on the wall. The cash register at his store was manual, and you had to calculate and enter the sales tax yourself. I remember when bankcards first started and they were all local (the one in St. Louis was called BankMate); there weren’t national cards like VISA or MasterCard. My nephews were totally amazed the first time they saw my pencil sharpener; I was bemused by their reaction. It’s just an old Boston® sharpener; a handcrank model on a stand with a shavings bin. They’d never seen one and they’re teenagers. They proceeded to sharpen several pencils each, with great glee. Wierd. And they were stunned to learn that an old 4000-pound car could come without power steering. (That’s why it has a 17" steering wheel.) That steering column? It’s a solid shaft of metal all the way from the front wheels, pointed straight at your chest, no collapsing shaft here. No seatbelts, either, boys…s-c-a-a-a-r-y! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![TWDuke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e495f1/32.png) [@TWDuke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TWDuke)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/57 "2008-10-25T01:42:29Z")
> [@robardin](#): > > My kids saw part of _Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure_ the other day and they loved it. Especially the time-traveling phone booth. It was wild how they came up with the idea of having the time traveling device be a pay phone, but it had to be crammed into this little box to take people places! > > The fact that a phone booth was meant to evoke a modern, everyday thing (incongruously juxtaposed into historical places and times) was lost on them – for them, the idea of a “phone booth” was just another bit of surrealism. I think the joke that gets lost is that in 1989, that kind of phone booth was already a bit old-fashioned (cf. Superman (1978)). It’s like the Doctor (who?) traveling through time and space in a police call box - a lot like that. ---
**Author:** ![Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a9a28c/32.png) [@Oslo\_Ostragoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oslo_Ostragoth)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/58 "2008-10-25T06:41:29Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > I tried to explain to my nephews (18 & 20) how when I was young my grandparents had a party line. Stole my post re party lines - I grew up with them. My contribution? You know you’re old when you’re older than the Chief Justice of the United States. ---
**Author:** ![Salem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8c91f0/32.png) [@Salem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Salem)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/59 "2008-10-25T10:39:17Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > But the re-dialing to try to get concert tickets off a radio station - that was sheer hell. (41, and we had a couple of rotary phones. Heck, I had one myself for the longest time.) > > My old fart revelation came a couple of years ago, when I had to start replacing things I had bought for the house (sheets, towels, toaster, etc.) I still think I’m in set up a household mode, and here I am in replace worn out things for my household. ☹ I just did this, too. My washing machine broke down. I was telling my daughter and she said, “Well, how old is it?” I told her it wasn’t that old at all - it was five years old when we moved in, it was practically new. “Uh, Mom, how long have we lived here?” :smack:17 years! (And, bless it’s little agitator, all it needed was a couple of new belts underneath that we easily changed ourselves and it’s back in business) You 30-somethings thinking you’re old - HA! Ya wanna know what’s depressing? When you look at the year of birth required to buy a pack of cigarettes and it’s two years less than your oldest child’s age - and I was 29 when I had her!! We had black and white tv when I was a kid - color wasn’t invented. Rotary phone - check. I was in my 20’s when they invented VCR’s and I remember signing up for cable TV that became available in my city - -after I got back from my honeymoon. We had albums and my first car had an 8-track player. Cassettes were considered way cool. You had a choice of VHS or BETA tapes for the VCR’s when they finally came round. We actually had to WAIT a year to see Christmas shows and the Wizard of OZ and honestly I miss that experience so much. It was a BIG DEAL when Rudolph was coming on - you made sure to be in front of the TV to get your fix for the year. I was in college when PONG was invented! Seriously, I’m only 49. When I think of all the changes in just the last 20-25 years, it’s unbelievable. Can’t even imagine what the next 20 years will bring and how old I’ll feel then. ---
**Author:** ![monavis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e0b2c6/32.png) [@monavis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monavis)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2008, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343/60 "2008-10-25T11:15:25Z")
> [@TV\_time](#): > > It was driven home again yesterday that I am old. > > Since I have theater experience, and since I live in a small town, the local school district has asked me to direct the local all-school play. It is a charming little comedy about living in the West Indies in the early 1960s. So I am having to get period clothes and period furnishings for the house set. One of the things I got was an “old fashioned” rotory phone. > > When I got to the theater yesterday, my young high-school actors were crowded around the phone oohing and awing about the phone and then they turned to me and asked, “Mr. TV can you teach us how to use this? We’ve seen them but we don’t know how.” > > I was stunned. I taught them, and they all went away thanking me. One even said, “My grandpa has one of these in his shop. He’s going to be surprised when I can use it now.” > > I was also surprised the other day when a young person asked me what time it was, and he was standing right next to a large standard clock. I pointed that out and he said something to the effect that he was fine with telling time with digital clocks but was not good with analog clocks. He said many of his friends had the same problem. Every one gets older, we start from the time we are born. I am older than I was yesterday,so is my 1 year old great grand child. To me older means you are still living and the ER on old means you can still be helped in the ER. After you are Dead they can say you were Old! The one with the most years wins. I have 2 years until I am 80 and wouldn’t change a thing! Monavis [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-know-youre-old-when/469343.md?page=4)