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You know you are getting old when:

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,074
Location
London, UK
Quite honestly, this bunch seem a little 'special' if you ask me, or at least terminally lazy. Most kids, even nowadays, would pick up the words 'eject' and 'play' as clues.

Mn. It can be amazing, though.... a few years ago, one of the burly girls on the English scene bought a Poloroid as a cute novelty thing. This girl was in her late twenties, so old enough to have seen her folks use film cameras, but probably had mostly only used digital herself. She asked one of her pals, another burly girl, to take a photo. This other girl was probably 22 or thereabouts at the time (we're talking around 2010). She actually squealed in surprise when something came out of the camera - she'd never seen a Poloroid before.

Another thing was that one kid commenting to the effect that rotary telephones are a technology of only ten years ago. My goodness! The WE 500 was developed in 1949! That's a tad more than ten years, or perhaps my arithmetic is behind the times . . .

Fairly normal, that, though. Kids that age don't have the perception of time we do - when you're less than ten years old, a decade seems like an abnormally long period of time. I remember when I was nine writing an essay in class - we had to make up our own stroy about sailing ships / pirates/ that kind of stuff. I set mine in 1957.... Kids that age just don't view time the way we do.

You know you're getting old when you get excited that someone carded you to buy alcohol or cigarettes.

Ha.... last happened me in Vegas fourteen years ago. I was twenty-six, and really chuffed.... until they carded the next guy in line, and he was sixty if he was a day.

:pound:

There was a scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in which Indy is lamenting the loss of both his father and his friend/fellow archaeologist, and the Dean of the college responds to this by saying, "We seem to have reached the age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away." You know you're getting old when you realize this applies to you.

I loved how they played to his age rather than trying to pretend he was still thirty. The whoel sequence in the warehouse near the beginning is especially good for that - "we've had worse odds" / "We were younger".... "I thuoght that was closer", et al.

Don't get me started on Senior Discounts.

At least that's a more dignified term than OAP - Old Age Pensioner.... ;)

Telegram code and "textspeak" are essentially the same thing, born out of the same necessity...to save characters when transmitting the message. In fact, you'll find the same words used in both such as the "MSG" and "PLS" you mention above.

On a related side note...one of the characteristics of both is the elimination of the vowels in the written form, making them a sort of abjad derivation, where the vowel is implied but not written, similar to some written languages, particularly in the Middle East.

Yes, in context, it really makes a lot of sense. The shame is that it then bleeds into areas where it is inappropriate (such as homework...), but then it was ever thus with slang.

While I do send text messages from time to time, I only do so in proper english. I refuse to stoop to text shorthand of any kind.

I prefer that myself, though I do nowadays have the benefit of a phone with a Qwerty keyboard and no limit on the length of my texts, as distinct from the drawbacks of older phones and limited characters.

You know you're getting old when all the music groups you think of as "new bands" have been around for 20 years.

Ha, yes.... The 20th anniversary of Kurt Cobain's suicide hit me. Back then, he'd seemed a generation away, at 27 compared to our nineteen years.... Now, staring down the barrel of forty, looking back at the photos he looks like a scared little boy.

You know you're getting old when you've seen the same stupid fads come around four or five times.

Oh, yeah.... all those eighties fashions coming back, stuff that even as a child I looked at and thought it was hideous....

Heh.

Where I notice it is in my humour. Of course, as my mother would tell you, I've been a crotchety old man of seventy-seven at heart since I was about fourteen. A running gag in my classroom was always "...or whatever it is you young people listen to nowadays" (when teaching copyright law and filesharing - jinkies, in itself that even sounds so old-fashioned now...). The first year nobosy laughed at that line, I really felt old. I've noticed that my grumpy old man routine (which is, frankly, for real anyhow) is always taken straight now....

Another one they say in academic circles is that you know you're old when you go to graduation and it's the ladies among the parents that you think are attractive all dressed up rather than the students..... Very true.... When I started teaching, some of my students were six months younger thqan me. Now they're closing in on twenty years younger, and they all look like babies.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,715
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Fairly normal, that, though. Kids that age don't have the perception of time we do - when you're less than ten years old, a decade seems like an abnormally long period of time. I remember when I was nine writing an essay in class - we had to make up our own stroy about sailing ships / pirates/ that kind of stuff. I set mine in 1957.... Kids that age just don't view time the way we do.

I once had a cable-TV installer gaze with amazement at my TV set -- made in 1954 -- and comment that it must go back to "Civil War times." And I didn't get the sense that he was joking.

As far as rotary phones go, around here there were plenty of them in use ten years ago -- and if you talk to most anybody around here today you'll find that most of them know somebody, usually an elderly relative, who still has and uses one. There are areas here there that didn't get dial service at all until the sixties or early seventies, so the technology isn't considered all that ancient.

I've made sure that all the young people of my acquaintance know how to use a dial phone. If they take nothing else out of knowing me, they'll have that.
 

GHT

I'll Lock Up
Messages
9,775
Location
New Forest
You know that you are getting old when you enter a public building, lift/elevator, gym or shopping mall, you don't hear piped muzak, and you think you've gone deaf.

Why do we have to not only suffer that infernal muzak, but it always seems to be that type of repetitive four note cr*p, over and over and over.
Yesterday we were the last to leave the gym. The place had gone blissfully quiet. I said to the trainer: "Have I gone deaf or have you switched that so called music off?" She laughed and said that if she had her way she would play Sinatra, she loves the crooners. (She's about 24.)
 

Stanley Doble

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,808
Location
Cobourg
There are 4 Tim Horton's in my town and I drive past 3 of them to get to the one that has no music. I complimented the manager and he told me the radio was broken.

Unfortunately they started renovations this week so not only do I have to go elsewhere for my coffee and croisants, they will probably fix the radio frowny face.
 
Messages
12,005
Location
Southern California
Hippies don't get old. They just wash away. :p
Nahhh. You know as well as I do that "hippies" and "wash" rarely coincide.

...I loved how they played to his age rather than trying to pretend he was still thirty. The whoel sequence in the warehouse near the beginning is especially good for that - "we've had worse odds" / "We were younger".... "I thuoght that was closer", et al...
I concur. I think it was a wise decision, and I thought it played particularly well during the quieter moments when Indy was "mentoring" Mutt.

Several years ago I read an interview with Clint Eastwood in which the interviewer asked him about writing and accepting roles that were (for him) "age appropriate", and his response was something to the effect of, "Have you ever seen a high school production with a teenager trying to act like an older person? It's just as stupid the other way around."
 

Gregg Axley

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,125
Location
Tennessee
I once had a cable-TV installer gaze with amazement at my TV set -- made in 1954 -- and comment that it must go back to "Civil War times." And I didn't get the sense that he was joking.

As far as rotary phones go, around here there were plenty of them in use ten years ago -- and if you talk to most anybody around here today you'll find that most of them know somebody, usually an elderly relative, who still has and uses one. There are areas here there that didn't get dial service at all until the sixties or early seventies, so the technology isn't considered all that ancient.

I've made sure that all the young people of my acquaintance know how to use a dial phone. If they take nothing else out of knowing me, they'll have that.
Wait, is that one of those hand crank TV's?
Wow, I've never seen one of those. :D

As for fads coming around 4-5 times, I can't wait for the bean bags, bell bottoms, and polyester shirts to come back in style. This time I'm old enough to enjoy them. ;)
 

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,074
Location
London, UK
I once had a cable-TV installer gaze with amazement at my TV set -- made in 1954 -- and comment that it must go back to "Civil War times." And I didn't get the sense that he was joking.

"...and tonight on Amish television network....". Mn. Interesting idea...

As far as rotary phones go, around here there were plenty of them in use ten years ago -- and if you talk to most anybody around here today you'll find that most of them know somebody, usually an elderly relative, who still has and uses one. There are areas here there that didn't get dial service at all until the sixties or early seventies, so the technology isn't considered all that ancient.

I've made sure that all the young people of my acquaintance know how to use a dial phone. If they take nothing else out of knowing me, they'll have that.

We had one until 1981 or so, when push-button phones started to become the norm. I remember then still being the standard for public call boxes, back when a standard element of a Cub Scout First Aid Kit was a 5p taped to thec inside of the lid, so you could make a phone call home if needsbe (emergency services being free from all phones, of course).

I concur. I think it was a wise decision, and I thought it played particularly well during the quieter moments when Indy was "mentoring" Mutt.

I actually thought they did those very well too - a nice role reversal from the Ford / Connry dynamic in Crusade

Several years ago I read an interview with Clint Eastwood in which the interviewer asked him about writing and accepting roles that were (for him) "age appropriate", and his response was something to the effect of, "Have you ever seen a high school production with a teenager trying to act like an older person? It's just as stupid the other way around."

Ha, superb...

My last Grammar School show, I played a man in his Sixties (Captain Bracket in South Pacific - now there's a role I'd love a crack at again). I totally get that.
 
Nahhh. You know as well as I do that "hippies" and "wash" rarely coincide.

I concur. I think it was a wise decision, and I thought it played particularly well during the quieter moments when Indy was "mentoring" Mutt.

Several years ago I read an interview with Clint Eastwood in which the interviewer asked him about writing and accepting roles that were (for him) "age appropriate", and his response was something to the effect of, "Have you ever seen a high school production with a teenager trying to act like an older person? It's just as stupid the other way around."

I meant that I wash them way with the garden hose. :p

Clint is more than correct. The whole ancient teenager thing is just stupid.
 

Stearmen

I'll Lock Up
Messages
7,202
You know that you are getting old when you enter a public building, lift/elevator, gym or shopping mall, you don't hear piped muzak, and you think you've gone deaf.

Why do we have to not only suffer that infernal muzak, but it always seems to be that type of repetitive four note cr*p, over and over and over.
Yesterday we were the last to leave the gym. The place had gone blissfully quiet. I said to the trainer: "Have I gone deaf or have you switched that so called music off?" She laughed and said that if she had her way she would play Sinatra, she loves the crooners. (She's about 24.)

Around here, when I get on the elevator, I will realize, after a few minutes, that I am listing to a cover of Led Zeppelin, Stairway To Heaven, or some other hard rock group, just in that annoying sound!
 

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