Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Things To Make You Feel Old

57 Comments

What’s funny about this is that most of them don’t have that effect at all on me, or at least not in the intended sense. They only make me feel old in the sense that many of them are and always have been irrelevant to my life, and many are in fact completely unknown to me. They’re just a bunch of things to make a young person feel old. You’d need a much different set of things to make me feel old.

57 thoughts on “Things To Make You Feel Old”

  1. Okay, time passes and everything gets older. Like that’s some sort of profound new discovery or something. All of those things were ephemeral to begin with, so of course they are receding into the past. (The Titanic ones just demonstrate ignorance, nothing to do with age.)

    What makes me feel old is having friends, who I still think of as young as when we met decades ago, who die of “old age” diseases. Or the fact that like my parents, I’m now taking pills every day. Or when I keep seeing the same stupidities and deliberate ignorance decade after decade. If I can remember those things and how they turned out, why can’t my betters who run the country see that?

  2. Most of these meant nothing to me (I had no clue what they were talking about) because they were movie or TV related. (I have never had an interest in such things…. even as a kid and a teen, I hated “pop culture”. I guess that was what I picked to rebel against.).

    Some of it hit home though… like the floppy disk. Hell, I still have floppies, and I mean the 1.2 meg 5 1/4 inch ones.

    I agree with Rand… the Titanic ones do indeed demonstrate nothing but ignorance (Just one symptom of their truly widespread and manifest ignorance). Yet, those cretins not only vote, they think they are doing the world a favor by doing so.

    1. I’ll go you one better; not only do I have IBM PC-DOS 360k floppies, I have some 5 1/2″ CP/M floppies as well. 🙂

      Wanna know what makes me feel old? Hearing “Doc” Severinsen is 85. :-/

      1. I will do you two better, I was cleaning an old box out the other day and found a deck of punch cards from an old Fortran program I wrote. 🙂

        1. Not bad; I was expecting someone to whip out some 160K Apple Dos floppies. 🙂

          To be honest, most of the “cutural” stuff on that list was new to me, except Titanic, which I’ve never watched.

        2. Thomas, you must remember that Asimov once wrote about how we might know more about the stone age than our own because we wouldn’t be able to retrieve the data on our ever changing media?

          1. Ken,

            Yes, G. Harry Stine wrote about it as well. I have some personal experience. In the early 1990’s one of the professors I had wanted to transfer a data set on punch cards to digital format, but despite searching there were no punch cards machines to find in NM. So instead I just re-entered the data into a digital format by reading it off the cards typing it into a data file with the always reliable Mark I eyeball optical reader 🙂

    2. AJ,
      I understand NOT having an interest, but HOW did you avoid most of it? I’m partially deaf and I couldn’t get away from most if that drivel.

      1. How do I avoid exposure to this stuff? Easy; I almost never watch TV (I don’t like it). I also almost never go to movies (the last one I saw in a theater was Titanic, when I was in high school). I skip all entertainment or celebrity articles.

        If I’m in a conversation with someone and they start talking about celebrities, I start talking about astrophysics, or vulcanology, or similar – in other words, something they have no interest in or knowledge of. That usually puts an end to that rather quickly. 🙂

        @ Casey; hearing Doc Severenson is 85 has no effect in me, because I have no clue who he is. 🙂

        1. Wow.

          I used to work 16 to 18 hours a day, working on the road away from home, fall into a hotel bed and rarely see more than the news or listen to the radio.

          But I still couldn’t, or still can’t, avoid this pop culture crap in every grocery store, mini-mart, drug store or newsstand. I use a Flash Blocker on my browser, but it didn’t / doesn’t block the news in general with all the pop culture BS.

          I honestly WISH this stuff wasn’t everywhere. It drives me nuts.

          1. It’s easier than it sounds.

            I run a flash blocker, ad blocker, cookie blocker, etc. As for news sites, I just ignore the pop culture stuff. It’s of no more interest to me than if it was printed in a language I don’t comprehend.

            Tv ads? I rarely watch TV, so not a problem.

            E-mail? I don’t get spam, so not a problem. How do I avoid spam? It’s easy; I treat my e-mail addys like my social security number. I don’t give it to anyone, or especially any company, that I don’t feel has a very good reason to have it. If any insist on a working one and I don’t feel they have a legit reason that’s in my interests, I use a site call 10 minute e-mail. It creates a working addy that self-destructs in 10 minutes.

            Social media? I hate it, so I’m not signed up for any.

            Grocery store? I can’t recall anything pop culture there aside from the tabloids in the checkout aisle, and I never bother with those.

            I agree, this crap is pervasive, but it can be ignored.

            I think the reason I’m such a fanatic about it is it never made sense to me. For example, when I was in my teens I was into rock music, but only to the extent that I’d probably know the name of a band whose music I liked. As for the names of the members or other info about the band, it just didn’t interest me. I look at it the same as I do airlines. I might like a particular airline, but I have no interest at all in learning about the private lives of its upper management. Why would I? So in the same vein, why would a rock band, or a sports team, or a bunch of actors, be any different?

            And when it comes to listening to opinions from celebs, I don’t. I can see no reason why their opinion carries any more weight than that of the average trash collector – and frankly, probably less.

            CJ 🙂

        2. Doc was the band-leader for Johnny Carson, and a fine trumpeter in his own right.

          Agree about the not watching TV thing. Every once in a while someone will make a reference to a current show, and are shocked that I don’t know what they’re talking about.

          However. From the YouTube clips I’ve seen I’m getting ready to buy the first two seasons of The Big Bang Theory. Very funny, well-written, and well-acted show.

  3. It’s always a movie that throws me in one of those “Holy crap I’m old” moments. My Cousin Vinny came on recently, that was the latest. Damn thing is over 20 years old now.

    1. Any time you watch an old movie or TV show, you’re looking back in time. It’s like the light from distant stars that took thousands (or millions or billions) of years to reach us. We’re seeing the stars as they were then. They might not even exist any more.

      When my wife and I bought our first home in 1986, our next door neighbor had two young daughters aged 6 and 8. They were good kids. Today, they’re both in their 30s, married and mothers to multiple children. When the hell did that happen?

      1. There is no now Larry, everything you perceive is back in time. Even if light and sound didn’t take time to reach you, all sensation takes time to be perceived internally.

        My old moments happen when I make a reference that I think everyone should know and they don’t. The sad thing is that young someone is probably and editorialist for some news organization.

        1. I’m watching the terrific movie, “The Best Years of Our Lives”. Homer’s little sister is perhaps 8 years old. The movie was released in 1946 so she must have been born around 1938. She’s around 75 today.

  4. [[[In two years it will be 2015 and you will be as far removed from 1985 as Marty McFly was from 1955.]]]

    And we still don’t have flying cars, or Mr. Fusion 🙁

      1. No JS. The flux capacitor is part of the time circuits. Mr. Fusion energizes the power circuits. You making a mistake like that makes me feel old!

    2. I was at the local Burger King a few months ago and in the parking lot I saw a red Delorean (I didn’t know some were painted) with a Mr. Fusion.

      I was impressed! 🙂

  5. What makes me feel old is when I first get up and am walking to the bathroom, feeling how I’m walking and not feeling motivated to straighten up and stop shuffling.

  6. I just showed this to me 32 year old son, he kept saying,

    “…Oh my God…get the hell outta here…no WAY….there’s simply no way…aw crap!!!”

    Over and over, and in various assemblages. It’s pretty funny to watch his reactions to the age of those things. It’s especially funny given that he was having a conversation with his 15 y/o step-son about the juxtaposition and connectedness of grades, jobs, driving privileges and paying for your own car insurance, just yesterday afternoon.

    I guess he’s beginning to have the beginnings of the dreaded and creeping ‘OMG I’m getting old’ realizations. Maybe there is a God.
    .
    .

    Cost of monthly internet service …………………….$49
    to see that story
    .
    .
    Cost of ‘raising’ a son to 32 years old…………….. I long ago lost track
    .
    .
    Living long enough to hear your son,
    tell his teenaged son the same things …………….Freakin’ Priceless!
    you told him as a teenager,

    1. I guess he’s beginning to have the beginnings of the dreaded and creeping ‘OMG I’m getting old’ realizations.

      Those things he was explaining to his stepson don’t mean he’s getting old — especially not at 32 –they mean he’s grown up. For too many, the getting old part happens first and it isn’t pretty to watch.

  8. Rand: ditto on your comment; most of these are things my kids would recognize and I have only passing knowledge of.

    A week or so ago, I did post this observation on Facebook:

    When I was a kid in elementary school, something that happened in the 1920s was ancient history, a really long time ago, a different era. And yet that’s the same gap between the present day and the 1970s. I find that staggering.

    That made me feel old. ..bruce..

  9. The only things that make me feel old is that I can’t run as fast as I used to, can’t lift as much as I used to, and always hold on to the railing when going downstairs. AND I wake up stiff every morning. Maybe that’s because I am old.

    Ya’ got two choices: get older or get dead. Older looks good so far. ;-p

    2. The only alternate to growing older is to die. All things considered, getting older isn’t so bad.

  10. I should add that the thing that I really can’t wrap my mind around, that makes me feel old more than anything else, is that my oldest sister will be 70 in 3 years. That’s an age I associate with my mom (who actually turns 89 this year) or with my late grandmother, not with my sister.

  11. None of the pop/TV references mean diddley to me as I haven’t watched a TV in about twenty years; the music references mean nothing to me as I already listen to a lot of blues and jazz and other stuff made by people long since dead; most of the rest barely registers even though I used to own a Razr.
    What does make me feel old is how the common heritage of history has changed. My buddy’s 14-year-old has never seen Casablanca and doesn’t know who either the Marx Brothers or the Three Stooges are, and I had to explain- with references- to the baristas in the Starbuck’s on Jonestown Street that suggesting that customers try their “Jonestown Special Blend!” was probably not gonna fly that well.

    1. Dave P,
      The sprog has now seen and enjoyed Casablanca. She still doesn’t know about the 3 stooges or the Marx bros. Though she really likes Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s on First.”

  12. When I was young I thought WWII happened long, long before I was born, now of course, events 18 years ago feel quite resent.

  13. Fun Fact: The very first computer I ever used as a part of a paying job was an IBM model 026 keypunch. The machine was built in 1949. It was still in daily use (in the library of the University of Dallas) in 1983.

    Didja Know???: In many stores and restaurants, the ambient music of choice today is 1960s and 1970s Top 40. That music is between thirty-five and fifty-five years old. It’s as if people in 1985 spent their time listening to Paul Whiteman and the Mills Brothers.

    Things from my youth that don’t exist today, at least not commonly, that I sometimes miss:

    1. Milkmen, delivery pharmacies, delivery liquor stores

    2. Full-service gasoline stations at which guys in bowties and peaked caps checked your oil, coolant, and tire pressure levels while filling up your car with fuel

    3. Classic Hollywood movies on local broadcast TV

    4. TV station sign-offs. “And now… our national anthem”

    5. Fallout shelters (marked ones, anyway)

    6. The Dallas Times Herald

    7. Suits for boys (with short pants)

    8. Ethnic neighborhoods (for white people)

    9. Twice-daily U.S. Mail delivery (and the U.S. Mail itself)

    10. America

    I’m too busy for nostalgia, but, still, a little every now and then is harmless. Sic transit gloria mundi and all that…

    2. I had no idea there was ever twice-daily mail delivery in the US. Interesting!

      Milkmen… I remember those, but not from the UK, not the USA.

      Marked fallout shelters… I do remember those, I saw a few in the 90’s. And come to think of it… there’s one in a nearby town that’s marked. I saw it within the last few months.

      I also remember growing up with a real president in the white house. His name was Ronald Reagan. I’ve been disappointed, to greater and lessor degrees, with all since.

      I miss America too.

      1. Yep. In Dallas c. 1968, when self-dialing was a novelty and telephone numbers began with exchange letters (call EVergreen 8-1554), my grandma would often skip the phone call to my aunt a few miles away and just writer her a letter. The envelope was addressed “XXXX Somewhere Drive, City” (you wrote “city” instead of “Dallas, Texas”), stamped it (eight cents for First Class Mail — Ike’s bald head on the stamp), and sealed it. About 8:30 a.m. the postman (always a man) would push his three-wheeled mail cart to the front door and knock. He wore a gray military-style uniform with necktie, peaked cap, and shiny shoes. He’d tip his hat to Grandma, hand her her mail, and take the letter from her. “Any stamps today, Mrs. McGee?” he’d ask. (Yes, the postman knew all the folks on his route by name, and you could buy stamps from him if you wanted.) Another hat tip and he and the letter was on its way.

        Later the same day, at about 3:30, the postman would show up again with more mail and the same friendly greeting. Meanwhile, a couple of miles away, my aunt was being handed the same envelope my grandmother had given her own postman that very morning.

        This was the way the U.S. Mail (i.e. the United States Post Office — not Nixon’s United States Postal “service”) did business. It was the way evertbody did business in America.

        The Internet it fine. Smartphones are great. Self-service is cheaper. But I’d trade them all to get America back — the real America, the one populated by human beings.

  14. I didn’t recognize a lot of the pop-culture references since I haven’t paid much attention to TV, movies, or music in recent years.

    And I didn’t know that Trix were ever shaped like pieces of fruit. That one came and went without my even realizing it.

  15. My dad died last year, and going through his stuff I found his collection of sliderules. He had at least 12, including a tie-tack version. Reminded me how pissed I was when some bastard stole my favorite, a circular sliderule, back in 19mumblemumble.
    I also found his flight planning computer. Basically a very elaborate and specialized sliderule. And that was the tech a freaking career NASA research pilot was using.

    1. I have a mechanical flight computer too. Why? Because it’s not going to fail, have a dead battery, etc, etc. That’s why I decided to learn how to use one. I do use electronic ones and GPS, but I have never gone up as pilot in command without my mechanical flight computer.

      And one other thing; I can use it one handed a lot easier than I can most of the electronic variety.

      My condolences on the loss of your father.

      CJ

      1. I did my training in the mid 90’s, and of course used a mechanical computer. My dad was, among other things, involved in advanced autopilot design, auto-landing systems, and glass panels. Nonetheless, he never went anywhere without his paper Jepps and his mechanical computer. He was a guy who never lost sight of the meaning behind FAR 91.3, no matter what.

    2. Talking on the phone with my brother.

      Sunlight dancing on the breeze-blown surface of a lake or pond.

      Seeing a preteen girl without visible tattoos.

  17. None of those things in the article makes me feel old.

    About the only thing that makes me feel that I’m NOT 17 is when I’m told some acquaintance’s kid or a relative’s kid is finishing high school and the last time I saw them they were infants.

    1. Especially if it’s some beautiful young lady and you suddenly realize you knew them when they were toddlers… then feel like a pervert for finding them so attractive. It gives me the willies when that happens. I have to repeat to myself Cary Grant’s admonition, “When a girl is under 21 she’s protected by law. When she’s over 65 she’s protected by nature. Anywhere in between, she’s fair game. Look out.”

      1. As a hetero male, I have to say, one of the best things about getting older is that there are SO MANY MORE lovely young women around than there were when I was 20.

  18. Axl Rose looked like a dirty girl. He looks like a mean old Viking chief now. Much better.

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