You know you are getting old when:

[GHT]

The weather brightened up today, so out came the old MG. I took it out for a drive, got some fuel and then a text came through from the missus: could I get this, that and the other whilst I was out. Parked up in our local supermarket, came out with my shopping to find a guy and his young son admiring the car. "What year is it?" Asks the little fellow," "1952," I replied. "Looks pre-war," said the Dad. "It was designed pre-war but hostilities meant that the factory went over to military manufacture," I explained.
"Did you buy it new?" The boy said. Don't you just love kids?

 

[Trenchfriend]

@GHT
Wonderful! Thanks for sharing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

You know you're getting old when you still call the New England football team the "Patsies."

 

[GHT]

Before the discovery of natural gas, our Island depended on coal gas, the residue after gas extraction from the coal, was known as coke. My late mother-in-law would always refer to her utility gas bill as being from: The Gas Light & Coke Company, even though coal gas, or town gas as we called it, had been redundant for decades.

 

[GHT]

You know you are getting old when you switch on a popular music station on the radio and listen for half an hour and don't recognise a single song. Worse, they play a golden oldie, from ten years back, and you don't recognise that either.
Or is it just me?

 

[tonyb]

You know you are getting old when you switch on a popular music station on the radio and listen for half an hour and don't recognise a single song. Worse, they play a golden oldie, from ten years back, and you don't recognise that either.
Or is it just me?

No, it's not just you. I've heard people at least 20 years younger than me express a similar thought. Popular music is mostly the province of the young, when it, too, is new.

 

[LizzieMaine]

That started, in part. with the rise of "hot dance" bands in the 1920s, with the kids cutting a rug to Jean Goldkette as Ma and Pa sat in the other room and played "Silver Threads Among The Gold" on the melodeon. But actual *songs* were primarily still written for grownups during the twenties, thirties, and forties -- most popular songs came from Broadway shows or movies during this period, and tended to be written from a rather sophisticated adult perspective: there was no trace of the adolescent angst that has dominated popular music since the mid-1950s. Popular music truly became "kids' music" when Broadway and Hollywood ceased to be significant forces in its production.

 

[Trenchfriend]

You know, that you are getting older, when you know, that this wasn't 2015, but 2005!

I didn't like it much, back then and I was never a fan of mainstream. But now, it sounds nostalgic.

 

[tonyb]

That started, in part. with the rise of "hot dance" bands in the 1920s, with the kids cutting a rug to Jean Goldkette as Ma and Pa sat in the other room and played "Silver Threads Among The Gold" on the melodeon. But actual *songs* were primarily still written for grownups during the twenties, thirties, and forties -- most popular songs came from Broadway shows or movies during this period, and tended to be written from a rather sophisticated adult perspective: there was no trace of the adolescent angst that has dominated popular music since the mid-1950s. Popular music truly became "kids' music" when Broadway and Hollywood ceased to be significant forces in its production.

It's good to see so many of the overlooked lights of second-half-of-the-20th-century pop music finally get their due. In recent years we've seen a handful of documentaries on the heretofore largely anonymous session players and songwriters and producers without whose contributions so many pop stars would have been bartenders and receptionists.

Among the people showcased in "The Wrecking Crew" is Hal Blaine, a drummer who is heard on hundreds (seriously) of tunes we all know. At one point in his later life he was a door rattler -- a low-wage security guard.

 

[MisterCairo]

Graham Norton (chat show host in the UK) had a guest on, a twenty-something comedian, and Graham asked him who his boyhood crush was.

The guy replied "Brittany Spears".

Graham responded with "How old am I that your boyhood crush was Brittany Spears"?!

I'm experiencing things like that. Adults saying how their favourite tv show as a kid was Friends.

(Mine was Gilligan's Island, though in my defence, they were by then re-runs).

 

[Zombie_61]

You know, that you are getting older, when you know, that this wasn't 2015, but 2005!

I didn't like it much, back then and I was never a fan of mainstream. But now, it sounds nostalgic.

To further reinforce the current topic of conversation, I know who Gwen Stefani is but I've never heard that song before.

I knew I had "hit the wall" when actors like Linda Cardellini, Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Jason Segel started appearing in almost every movie made (or so it seemed). I'd ask someone, "Who are they?" and usually got the off-handed response, "Oh, you know, they were in Freaks and Geeks." I had never heard of that either.

...I'm experiencing things like that. Adults saying how their favourite tv show as a kid was Friends.

(Mine was Gilligan's Island, though in my defence, they were by then re-runs).

I have a vague recollection of watching some of Gilligan's Island when the episodes were first aired, but mostly remember them from reruns as well. I did watch Star Trek from the very beginning, but that was mostly due to my older sister's insistence. The Batman series starring Adam West and Burt Ward, however, was all my idea.

 

[Fading Fast]

... "Oh, you know, they were in Freaks and Geeks." I had never heard of that either....

Not a bad show. Saw it on Netflix awhile back. I think the show was made in the late '90s, but is set in the early '80s. It follows the lives of a bunch of high school kids who went to high school only a few years after I did (meaning, I graduated high school in '81 about when the kids on the show were freshman in high school).

Far from perfect, but they did get the "feel" right overall and the cultural references and attitudes of the kids felt pretty accurate to me. I had a bit of deja vu watching it as it had some very poignant moments that only someone who lived through that time and went to high school then would have known. I found myself caring about the characters. Again, far from perfect, but if you get Netflix, it's worth trying it out (and, if memory serves, the first few episodes aren't that good, but it gets much better).

 

[Zombie_61]

Not a bad show. Saw it on Netflix awhile back. I think the show was made in the late '90s, but is set in the early '80s. It follows the lives of a bunch of high school kids who went to high school only a few years after I did (meaning, I graduated high school in '81 about when the kids on the show were freshman in high school).

Far from perfect, but they did get the "feel" right overall and the cultural references and attitudes of the kids felt pretty accurate to me. I had a bit of deja vu watching it as it had some very poignant moments that only someone who lived through that time and went to high school then would have known. I found myself caring about the characters. Again, far from perfect, but if you get Netflix, it's worth trying it out (and, if memory serves, the first few episodes aren't that good, but it gets much better).

I would have been class of '79 if I had graduated (it's a long story, but I got my G.E.D. instead). I did find Freaks and Geeks on cable when the reruns were still being aired, but after watching a few episodes I found it had so little in common with my high school experience that I couldn't relate to it.

My high school experience was replicated in the movie Dazed and Confused (1993)--it was spot-on, and I went to school with every one of those characters.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Supermarket-staff gets younger and younger. At the checkstand, there was again the girl from monday, which is so slender and young/teenage-looking. When you think, she could be nearly my daughter.

 

[ChrisB]

Supermarket-staff gets younger and younger. At the checkstand, there was again the girl from monday, which is so slender and young/teenage-looking. When you think, she could be nearly my daughter.

Yeah, I'm not getting older, but everyone else seems to be getting younger!

 

[Fading Fast]

Supermarket-staff gets younger and younger. At the checkstand, there was again the girl from monday, which is so slender and young/teenage-looking. When you think, she could be nearly my daughter.

You're 32, assuming there's a minimum working age of about 16 in Germany, then either you were a very precocious 16 year old boy, or you're getting ahead of yourself. You are too young to be thinking like this - get out there, there's plenty of time later in life to recognize how young everyone is.

 

[GHT]

I couldn't agree more FF, some say I was born in 1946, piffle, I'm much too young to be old.

 

[ChrisB]

When my grandmother, in her 80s, went to visit her sister in Florida, she would complain that "there's nothing but old people here!". She did not see herself as part of that group.

 

[PeterGunnLives]

The weather brightened up today, so out came the old MG. I took it out for a drive, got some fuel and then a text came through from the missus: could I get this, that and the other whilst I was out. Parked up in our local supermarket, came out with my shopping to find a guy and his young son admiring the car. "What year is it?" Asks the little fellow," "1952," I replied. "Looks pre-war," said the Dad. "It was designed pre-war but hostilities meant that the factory went over to military manufacture," I explained.
"Did you buy it new?" The boy said. Don't you just love kids?

To kids, the past is a big, vague blur. When I was a little kid in the late 1980s, I asked my dad, who was born in the 1950s, if he had fought in World War I when he was in the army.

 

[tonyb]

When my grandmother, in her 80s, went to visit her sister in Florida, she would complain that "there's nothing but old people here!". She did not see herself as part of that group.

My twice-widowed mom is now in her 80s. She is the board president of her small-town senior center and manages the center's thrift store. While she enjoys the company of many of her contemporaries, she would never choose to live in a "retirement community" or an "active adult community" or any other euphemistic title for places catering exclusively to old people.

I'm quickly approaching "retirement age" myself, and while I know some of the physical and mental effects of advancing years, in some regards I've never felt more vital. If all those years of experience have taught me anything, it is how to push the extraneous and the irrelevant aside and get to the heart of a matter. Focus, you know.