You know you are getting old when:

[EngProf]

In case that chart is hard to read (black on black) just copy the image and paste it into a Word document. It then becomes black print on white and you can also expand it to read it easier.
As for the specific data, that little red pointy-peak at the left of the red part is ME - ~1948(!).

 

[EngProf]

I always thought it should have been from 1946-1955. Why, the draft, 1955 was the year that men would have to face the draft when they turned 18 in 1973! Technically 1975 was the last year, but mid 1973 was the year of the last lucky lottery winner!

Due to college deferments my actual draft lottery was in 1970. No. 243
The most ironic twist of the draft lottery involved a good friend of mine. His father was a four-star general and he was Student Commander of the Army ROTC unit. He had planned on a military career all his life.
His draft lottery number was 366 (!).
(They put his picture in the humor section of school annual because of that.)

 

[Zombie_61]

You know you're getting old when you suddenly realize that there's an entire adult generation out there that has never heard of Zasu Pitts.

I've worked with people who were approximately my age (give or take a year or two either way) who had never heard of the Marx Brothers.

 

[wgnovak]

I've worked with people who were approximately my age (give or take a year or two either way) who had never heard of the Marx Brothers.

I’ve worked with people who have never used a telephone booth. A few have never seen one.

 

[Bigger Don]

On the topic of the baby boom, this chart is rather interesting --

It's kind of hard to read, but the 1946-64 boom is in red. But note that even at its peak, the postwar boom was still far less than the overall birthrate of the decade just before WWI. Generational demographics are all relative.

Hmmm...wondering what that chart would look like if adjusted for survival to 1 year, or some other interval. Medical care had advanced quite a bit in a half century, increasing the survival of infants and mothers.

 

[Bigger Don]

B

I always thought it should have been from 1946-1955. Why, the draft, 1955 was the year that men would have to face the draft when they turned 18 in 1973! Technically 1975 was the last year, but mid 1973 was the year of the last lucky lottery winner!

From what I remembered, no one born in 1954 was drafted, although we got our draft numbers 1973 (March 8). Since I had already enlisted by then it was was a non-event for me. I had completed Basic Training and was in USAF tech school at the time. More important to us was about 5-6 weeks earlier when the ceasefire was announced. Since I was going to a B-52 school, I was very interested in the Dec 1972 bombing missions when B-52s were being shot down

Draft numbers were also pulled for those born 1955 and 1956.

https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/lotter1

Interestingly, the man identified as the last one drafted for during the Vietnam era stayed...and stayed...and stayed. According to the stories at this search, he was inducted in April 1972 when he was 19, retiring 42 years later.

 

[MisterCairo]

I’ve worked with people who have never used a telephone booth. A few have never seen one.

More rare every day. My daughters have never seen me use one, and have never seen one with a phone book hanging inside as used to be the case.

Also, one in three youngsters (millennials, whatever that means) in Prince Edward Island don't know how to use the yellow pages. I can't find the link anymore, but it was one of those generational things they were testing out.

 

[Fading Fast]

She was originally cast in "All Quiet On The Western Front" in 1930, but she'd already done enough comedies by then that preview audiences laughed when she appeared on screen. Out she came.....

Unless her role* was small, that had to be expensive to do if they were already at the preview audience stage - no?

*Originally typed as "roll" which could mean she was having a small breakfast or could have been a euphemism for her sexual capacity.

 

[LizzieMaine]

All the kids I know know how to use and have used a rotary telephone, because they know me.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Unless here roll was small, that had to be expensive to do if they were already at the preview audience stage - no?

It wasn't a large role, but yes, it cost. Uncle Carl was not pleased, but it was one of two super-colossal prestige pictures Universal was producing for that season, and they couldn't risk releasing it as-was. The other super-colossal for that year was "The King of Jazz," a gigantic Technicolor musical revue featuring Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, and it was already over budget as well -- but if Universal wanted to play with the big boys, it had to be prepared to spend like the big boys.

 

[Fading Fast]

It wasn't a large role, but yes, it cost. Uncle Carl was not pleased, but it was one of two super-colossal prestige pictures Universal was producing for that season, and they couldn't risk releasing it as-was. The other super-colossal for that year was "The King of Jazz," a gigantic Technicolor musical revue featuring Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra, and it was already over budget as well -- but if Universal wanted to play with the big boys, it had to be prepared to spend like the big boys.

Thank you. This also brings to mind something I read somewhere (probably on FL), but didn't pre-view audiences chuckle at George Reeves in "From Here to Eternity" as "Superman" was just becoming known on TV at the time "FHTE" was about to be released and, because of that, they cut his role back in the movie?

 

[LizzieMaine]

That one seems to be an urban legend -- the screenwriter always insisted the scenes Reeves has in the picture as it was released were exactly the scenes he wrote, and none were cut. 1953 was still early enough in the run of the "Superman" TV series that it hadn't shown in all TV markets, and it was also the first year since the lifting of the TV licensing freeze -- so there were still many markets that didn't yet have television at all. While moviegoers might have snickered in New York or Los Angeles, there were still millions of people who'd never seen Reeves in tights and cape. For them, the one true Superman was still Bud Collyer.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Hmmm...wondering what that chart would look like if adjusted for survival to 1 year, or some other interval. Medical care had advanced quite a bit in a half century, increasing the survival of infants and mothers.

In Germany, we say, that because of the permanent availability of coffee after 1945, the age of life here got higher and higher and so it came to the now very high reachable age, which other people wonder about. The older get older and older and of course there are too less kids born, actual.

Coffee = Sweet juice, arousing life.

 

[Fading Fast]

That one seems to be an urban legend -- the screenwriter always insisted the scenes Reeves has in the picture as it was released were exactly the scenes he wrote, and none were cut. 1953 was still early enough in the run of the "Superman" TV series that it hadn't shown in all TV markets, and it was also the first year since the lifting of the TV licensing freeze -- so there were still many markets that didn't yet have television at all. While moviegoers might have snickered in New York or Los Angeles, there were still millions of people who'd never seen Reeves in tights and cape. For them, the one true Superman was still Bud Collyer.

Another example of the superiority of Lizziepedia over Wikipedia.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Regarding the discussion of baby boomers and the 1946-1964 dates usually ascribed... It's clear that there are several different cohorts within this huge category. Growing up in the early fifties vs. late sixties were quite different experiences (and we won't even discuss where you grew up, which is pretty key also).

I am a mid-boomer, born in 1955. I find I have relatively little in common with folks 9 years older or 9 years younger than me - our experiences simply aren't congruent. But narrow that down to just 3 or 4 years either way, and we're in the same generation, with some degree of similar experiences and outlooks. So the baby boom is really more like early boomers, mid-boomers, late boomers than a single "generation".

 

[Fading Fast]

Regarding the discussion of baby boomers and the 1946-1964 dates usually ascribed... It's clear that there are several different cohorts within this huge category. Growing up in the early fifties vs. late sixties were quite different experiences (and we won't even discuss where you grew up, which is pretty key also).

I am a mid-boomer, born in 1955. I find I have relatively little in common with folks 9 years older or 9 years younger than me - our experiences simply aren't congruent. But narrow that down to just 3 or 4 years either way, and we're in the same generation, with some degree of similar experiences and outlooks. So the baby boom is really more like early boomers, mid-boomers, late boomers than a single "generation".

As someone born in '64, I fully agree. I relate to those +/- 5 years my age as we had similar experiences growing up, but my friends who were born in the late '40s / early '50s have a very different perspective.

 

[Bigger Don]

The older get older and older and of course there are too less kids born, actual.

and the US and Germany facing similar issues...but I've promised to avoid political discussion here.

Coffee = Sweet juice, arousing life.

Hmmm....but maybe we can good-naturedly pick on the French.

When I was working in Nice my French co-horts chided me for drinking my coffee American style, what they saw a huge vat of weak brown water. I would sip and talk, talk and sip. OTOH, as far as I was concerned, they had thimbles of toxic sludge ( ). Yak, yak, yak, yak yak yak...then slam the whole thing down at once.

Funny thing, we were usually done at the same time. They thought they enjoyed theirs more, I knew I did.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I was having this conversation last night with the kids at work about "the millennials," an even larger generational group than the boomers. One of the kids was born in 1988, and another was born in 1999. One is pushing thirty, the other isn't yet a legal adult, and yet they're "millennials," even though their experiences are vastly different. One remembers, just vaguely, but she remembers, the world before the internet was a common thing. The other has no concept of such a world.

That vast gulf is even more drastic than the difference between early and late boomers -- the world of 1963 was, in the way that technology affected daily life, not all that different from the world of 1947: television was more prevalent, certainly, in the later year, but the way it was consumed was essentially no different from the way in which radio had been consumed, and its distribution was controlled by the same companies, in the same way, as radio had been. It was a new medium, but it was still the same old message. The Boys were still running the show and still pulling the same strings, they were simply using more sophisticated strategies to do it.

Likewise politics and the world scene -- the world of 1963 was simply the extended consequence of the world of 1947. The same tensions were still there, they were merely amplfied by the passing of sixteen years. It was clearly the same world, motivated by the same forces. Certainly the Vietnam War had its impact in shaping the outlook of, especially, the Early Boomers, but bear in mind that for more than half of that generation -- the female half -- that impact was intellectual and academic, not physical. A boomer girl did not experience Vietnam anxieties in the same way as a boomer boy, and yet they're still part of the same generation. And certainly that war was, in itself, not a unique manifestation in a specific time -- it was entirely a product of postwar political tensions, and those same tensions continued after the last helicopter left Saigon. The pre-Vietnam War world and the post-Vietnam War world were still the same world.

But the world in 1988 and the world in 1999 were two different epochs. The Cold War still existed in 1988. In 1999, the global power structure, and its pattern of social tensions, were entirely different. The Internet was known only to the military-industrial-academic complex and perhaps the geekiest of futuristic geeks in 1988. In 1999 the world was in the middle of the dot-com bubble. A child born in 1988 remembers watching television at a set time, or perhaps taping in on a VCR. A child born in 1999 has, at most, only the vaguest memories of this. A child born in 1988 remembers a daily newspaper at the breakfast table. For a child born in 1999, the news has always been something first accesed thru the internet. A child born in 1988 quite possibly had a rotary telephone in their home when they were very young, or had a relative who did. A child born in 1999 has very likely never had a wired telephone of any kind in their home, and thinks the word "telephone" itself is some kind of quaint old-fashioned word. A child born in 1988 was born in to a world where books were essentially unchanged from what they'd been for over four hundred years. A child born in 1999 may own most of their library on a hand-held electronic device. And so on and on and on and on.

The gap between the pre-Internet and post-Internet world is the greatest sociological gulf since the Enlightenment, and yet demographers tell us there's a single generation that bridges it. Think about that the next time you're tempted to complain about "these millennials."

 

[MisterCairo]

Think about that the next time you're tempted to complain about "these millennials."

Millennial: One lacking the ability to examine the yellow pages, discern that it is an alphabetic listing of business types which in turn are listed alphabetically, and locate a specific business, say, a shoe store.

Generation Y: One who can both locate a business using the yellow pages, locate it using Google or Bing, type 40 wpm on a computer keyboard and use cursive writing, etc., etc.

My wife is a high school teacher (born 1970 - hardly a Luddite). If you want to discuss millennials Lizzie, I'll connect the two of you together.

By whatever technological means you desire.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Demographers consider "millennials" those born between 1984 and 2000, and that's the point of what I'm talking about. The born-pre-Internet and born-post-Internet generation should be considered two different things entirely. "Millennials" as a single generation are a much bigger myth than Boomers. "Digital Immigrants" and "Digital Natives" might be better terms -- the differences in the way they experience the world are far more vast than those separating early and late boomers.

By the way, I've been working with "millennials" on a daily basis for twelve years now, and I have yet to meet a single one who doesn't know how to use a phone book. They might sneer at it, but they know how to use it. Maybe the ones you're encountering are just bone dumb.

Another thing to consider is that phone books today aren't organized the way they used to be -- I don't know how it is in Canada, but in the US, since the breakup of the Bell System, there is no longer a single, standardized format for the Yellow Pages. Every phone company issues their own version, and many are set up in a confusing way -- it used to be, with the Bell System directories, that all numbers were shown in the White Pages, whether residences or businesses, and all businesses were shown in the Yellow, whether they paid for an ad or not. But at least in my part of the US, we get multiple books now, from different companies, each with its own system for organizing the listings. The most commonly used version has two different white page sections, one for residences and one for businesses, and the Yellow Pages now include only those businesses that paid to be listed, with the classified category arrangement organized on what seems to be an arbitrary basis. You might find a garage, for example, under Automotive Service, Automotive Repair, Cars -- Service, or Repairs -- Automotive, depending on the whim of whoever organized the book. Or you might not find it listed at all, and you might have to turn back to the Business White Pages to find it. I don't wonder kids get confused, *I* get confused, and phone books helped teach me to read in the first place.