You know you are getting old when:

[KILO NOVEMBER]

When I was in high school I worked for a small businessman who owned vending machines, mainly cigarette vending machines. I don't remember the last time I saw one. They used to be everywhere, restaurants, bars, cafeterias, ...

 

[Zombie_61]

When I was in high school I worked for a small businessman who owned vending machines, mainly cigarette vending machines. I don't remember the last time I saw one. They used to be everywhere, restaurants, bars, cafeterias, ...

The last time I saw one was December of 2005; that was when the company I was working for closed it's doors for the last time and there was a cigarette machine, a soda machine, and a snack machine on the customer loading/unloading dock. With the anti-smoking campaigns increasing in California at the time the vendor hadn't filled or serviced it for quite some time and at some point vandals had broken into it, so it was a little damaged and mostly empty and we all assumed it was cheaper and easier for the vendor to abandon it where it was than to haul it off.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I suppose it was the far stricter laws regarding sales of smokes to minors that pretty well ended cigarette vending machines.

 

[GHT]

I don't ever remember having difficulty buying a pack of smokes as a 12 year old....never an issue.

It was a right of passage, I was in my late teens and at college when I took up tobacco, but I knew many a friend who had started smoking much younger. There was even smaller contents cigarette packs, I remember packs of ten and even packs of five. Imperial Tobacco sold a cigarette named: "Wild Woodbines" in packs of five, as did John Player, who sold a cigarette named "Players Weights" in fives. Aimed at children, start them young.

What else was a right of passage was getting into the cinema to see a movie with an 'X' rating. Young boys would be most disappointed in that the only nudity on offer would be a nubile lady swimming in a lake. You might see a distant shot of her buttocks, under water of course, and if you paid close attention, you might just get a glimpse of the side of her breast. Another reason that a film carried an X certificate was the use of profanities. Many a schoolboy blew his pocket money on the entrance charge of a film that had lurid details and women, partly clad, in the photos advertising the details, only to find that it was all eff this and eff that. Nowadays schoolboys can have whatever fetish that they want. Wall to wall pornography all on their phone. Life does come full circle and you know that you are getting old when you have a blocker for what was once the drain on your pocket money.

 

[Fifty150]

How the world has changed. Today's rights of passage are a little different. Sexting. Oral at Bar Mitzvahs. You are old if you don't get one or the other.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

"Oral at Bar Mitzvahs", that isn't the speech the newly-minted "man" gives?

 

[GHT]

"Oral at Bar Mitzvahs", that isn't the speech the newly-minted "man" gives?

 

[Fifty150]

Kids these days.....

 

[Trenchfriend]

That's the difference between my generation and them.

In the 90s, we HAD a childhood!

 

[Turnip]

 

[Tiki Tom]

Talk about terms I never thought I’d see together in the same headline.
Oye vey.

 

[Fifty150]

Boys and girls fooled around in Junior High. It happened at my Middle School. And those were more innocent times.

 

[Fifty150]

80's band The Jets participated in a no smoking campaign. As 1 of the sisters recalled, she was there smoking.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Here we go again.
A “fountain of youth pill” has been discovered.

https://www.studyfinds.org/fountain-of-youth-pill-longevity/

Haven’t we heard this before?

 

[Zombie_61]

Here we go again.
A “fountain of youth pill” has been discovered.

https://www.studyfinds.org/fountain-of-youth-pill-longevity/

Haven’t we heard this before?

Yeah, but, read the headline: "'Fountain of youth' pill shows ability to dramatically increase longevity in mice". Does anyone really want Earth's rodents to live longer?

 

[Tiki Tom]

Yeah, but, read the headline: "'Fountain of youth' pill shows ability to dramatically increase longevity in mice". Does anyone really want Earth's rodents to live longer?

Hey! What am I? The straight man (as in “he who tees up the joke”) around here?

Okay, here is another one. But this one is actually available. Eye drops that eliminate the need for reading glasses. That’s a big deal for a lot of people. Heck, I’ll probably give it a try.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vuity-eye-drops-fda-approved-blurred-vision-presbyopia/

 

[Trenchfriend]

Orgasms, what else??

 

[Zombie_61]

Hey! What am I? The straight man (as in “he who tees up the joke”) around here?

Okay, here is another one. But this one is actually available. Eye drops that eliminate the need for reading glasses. That’s a big deal for a lot of people. Heck, I’ll probably give it a try.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vuity-eye-drops-fda-approved-blurred-vision-presbyopia/

I'd definitely be willing to give this a try. I don't mind wearing my reading glasses that much, but those times when I don't have them with me...

 

[Trenchfriend]

Good old "Aniseed biscuits" with any kind of coffee for dunking, anyone?

 

[Tiki Tom]

One of the things I miss about my former life was that late afternoon cake and coffee was almost a ritual, meaning that you would actually sit down and have coffee with a colleague. I’d usually skip the cake. In my new life, everything seems to always be “on the run.”