All this rotary telephone talk makes me remember the telephone we had when I was a kid. You held the ear piece to your ear, spun the crank on the side of the box, and then told the operator who you wanted to talk to. IIRC, it was around about 1950 that we actually got rotary phones; everyone had a four digit number. Ours was 4941. Our post office box number was 64. Why can I remember stuff from the 1940s and not be able to tell you what I had for dinner last night?
I teach Taekwondo. Sometimes, in giving directions to students, I’ll use “clockwise” and “move towards 3 o’clock”, etc. And I get the blankest looks. Then I have to take a moment and teach them how to read a clock.
I swear, when we get the school rebuilt, I’m going to paint a clock on the mats…
First time I felt old was when I noticed that the Playmate of the month was born the year I graduated high school.
You realize depends don’t wear well with a thong.
I feel old everytime I see the 25th or 30th anniversary re-release of a movie I remember seeing in its initial release.
Or, alternately, a Big Thing vanishes into obscurity.
“The China Syndrome” doesn’t register a blip with twenty-something kids today.
“I’ll just take this out of the microwave before it goes all ‘China Syndrome.’”
“Huh?”
“Forget it. Old guy mumbling.”
This happened to me at a doper meeting. Myself and one other person were in our forties. The rest of the group were college age.
At one point in the conversation, I repeated the joke about “sis boom bah” being the sound made by an exploding sheep. The other guy my age laughed but the rest of the group only sort of chuckled, obviously not recognizing the reference. So I explained it was an old “Carnak the Magnificent” joke. Blank stares around the table. So I explained that Carnak was a regular character played by Johnny Carson. A few glimmers of vague recognition. “Wasn’t he the guy that used to do the Jay Leno show?”
Get off of my lawn ya young whippersnapper.
One of the guys in my office came in and asked me if I happened to have a working TK-50 drive at home. So, apparently am I not only old enough just to know what one is, but I’m the weird old guy that might just have one squirreled away somewhere.
It’s a tape drive that was used in PDP and VAX computers - if you say “what’s a VAX” I’m going to smack you.
I looked in the newspaper this weekend and saw in the “Born This Day” column, Jon Anderson of Yes just turned 64. Yikes! :eek:
I felt old in the 1970s when Wings was becoming popular, and younger folks marveled in the revelation that Paul McCartney had been in another band. Now I feel old that no one’s heard of Wings.
Same…and the first pushbutton phone we had had a pulse option, because there were still enough phone systems at the time that wouldn’t handle touch tone.
Last time I can remember using a rotary phone I was in Cadets, so I’d have been 13.
That’s like the common farang (Westerner) saying here in Thailand: “You’re only as old as the girl at the end of your arm.”
This year, for the first time, I’m voting for a presidential candidate who is younger than me.
I now need bifocal reading glasses.
I got the letter from AARP about three years ago.
I was around before:
[ul]DVRs
[li]iPods[/li][li]LCD or plasma TVs[/li][li]HDTVs[/li][li]Digital camcorders[/li][li]Digital audio recorders[/li][li]Digital still cameras[/li][li]DVDs[/li][li]PDAs[/li][li]The World Wide Web[/li][li]Cell phones[/li][li]CDs[/li][li]Personal computers[/li][li]Cordless phones[/li][li]VCRs[/li][li]Telephone answering machines[/li][li]The Internet[/li][li]8-track tapes[/li][li]Audio cassettes[/li][li]Color TV[/ul][/li]
When I was a kid:
[ul]No one owned a telephone. (They were all leased from The Phone Company.)
[li]Streetcars ran throughout Baltimore (and many other major cities).[/li][li]A child ticket to a movie cost 35 cents. [/li][li]There were no multiplex movie theaters. All theaters had only one screen.[/li][li]Road construction crews used smudge pots with open flames to mark off work zones. (No blinking yellow electric lights.) [/li][li]I walked a mile to and from school every day from grades 1-6. [/li][li]I was in first grade when the Beatles hit the scene, and in second grade when President Kennedy was killed. [/li][li]No families on our street owned more than one car.[/li][li]Most neighborhoods had alleys behind the houses. [/li][li]Kids went trick-or-treating, by themselves, at other houses in the neighborhood, not stores in the mall. [/li][li]There were shopping centers, but no shopping malls.[/li][li]There was no cable TV, and we could receive three broadcast TV stations on the one B&W TV our family owned. (It didn’t have a UHF dial.)[/li][li]Our family’s audio system was mono.[/li][li]The Good Humor man came to the neighborhood in a truck like this.[/li][/ul]
I needs to know(movie reference) Do you?
The first video recording unit I used was a 1/2" reel to reel B&W Sony.
Fuel injection was rare and Carbs the norm. Yearly tune-ups. Points and condensers. Polarising the voltage regulater on your generator.
Exhaust with out catalitic converters. Leaded gas. Sunoco 260.
Rick, Gary T. Jump in any time.
Not old enough to remember “rumble seats” but I once drove a Ford with one.
I’m 27 and we had a rotary phone in the house until I was about 10 or 11, and I had a couple of friends who still had them when I was in High School at around 13 or 14.
I’m looking for an old “Candlestick” style one to go on my desk as it happens; apparently you can still use them to receive calls but not make them here.
As for watches, my wife brought me a great Fossil analogue watch for my birthday last month; it looks like something from a late 1950s “The World Of Tomorrow Awaits!” short; complete with lots of dials, brushed steel, and some visible parts of the internal mechanism. I love analogue watches; I haven’t worn a digital watch since I was 12 and I plan to keep it that way.
Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you?
Does that mean I’m old if I get the reference?
Sigh. And yes, I had one.
I remember my stepdad bringing home a digital watch, a hand-held calculator, a Pong game, a remote control for the TV (it had a cord), and our first microwave (my mother was terrified the thing would leak and cook us all from the inside out).
When we’d go to the gas station, bells would ring, and a guy would come out to the driver’s side window. You’d tell him how much gas to put in your car, and while it was filling, he’d wash the windows and check the oil in your car. If you filled up, you’d get to pick one of the inflatable toys that were strung all over the gas station lot, or you could collect glasses with football team logos on them.
Buses ran with antennae on the top, which were connected to wires above the street (I STILL have no idea how that worked.) And in the backs of taxicabs were “jump seats” on the floor between the actual back seat and the front seat. You would twist the seat and it would spring up from the floor, and then you could sit on it and twirl around (this also adjusted the height of the seat) until your Mom told you to knock it off. If you had been shopping and you hailed a cab, the cabbie would pull over, get out and take your bags and put them into the trunk for you. Then he’d come around and open the door for you.
My kid thinks I am making this all up. I’m only 43!
You mean like this? They’re all over Seattle to this day.
I wear an analog watch, too. I bought mine where I work. It shows Minnie Mouse ™ as a school teacher pointing to a simple arithmetic problem. I chose this particular watch face for several reasons. First, I like Mickey/Minnie Mouse. Second, more important, I have two relatives in the education field. My older daughter teaches in Sparks, NV; my husband is a TA, a teaching assistant & sometimes substitute teacher at the local adult high school.
A young coworker looked at my watch & asked about the arithmetic problem (2+3=5). He asked, “Does this tell the date? Some other coordinates? What?” No, it’s just a picture. My answer should have been a Zen-like, “it is what it is.” My mistake.
Also, I know I’m old. I asked for, & got a Nintendo DS for Christmas last year. I wanted a Brain Age to track my mental agility, or lack thereof. Got both, learned to use them. Now, what are the other buttons for?
Love, Phil
Yes! How do they work?
One of the kids I used to babysit for just became a grandmother!
In 2 years I’ll be eligible for Medicare, so I can afford to replace my knees.
I remember my first calculator in, I think, the late 70s. It had an LED display and did simple arithmetic. I paid $100 for it.
I occasionally refer to my iPod as a Walkman.
At my age, everything either dries out or leaks.