You know you are getting old when:

[tonyb]

A somewhat younger friend was by this afternoon. I put on the Harry Belafonte album recorded live at Carnegie Hall in 1959.

He said, “My grandmother had this album.”

 

[Edward]

View attachment 511527

Zero for me. I have younger friends still in their middle thirties who will be running pretty close to the big 20, though. :0

A somewhat younger friend was by this afternoon. I put on the Harry Belafonte album recorded live at Carnegie Hall in 1959.

He said, “My grandmother had this album.”

I well remember making the switch with my students from saying "your parents" to "your grandparents". Though I've yet to knowingly teach the child of a former student, it's now chronologically very possible...

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

When you learn that a PSA is not just something they broadcast on TV or radio.

 

[Trenchfriend]

When on crappy days your cozy bed is more appealling than any girls...

 

[tonyb]

When on crappy days your cozy bed is more appealling than any girls...

These are far from mutually exclusive options.

 

[Zombie_61]

...when your friends' children's children are having children, making your friends Great Grandparents.

 

[GHT]

...when your friends' children's children are having children, making your friends Great Grandparents.

How I can so empathise with that. Tina & I have no kids, it's a long story, something for another discussion somewhere else, but when dear friends start having great grand children, nothing freaks me out more. I mean, come on, I might be old, but it's that word great that freaks me out.

 

[Turnip]

…you realize that you will have bought more and more things for the last time in your life.

 

[Ingramite]

My Battle Vest:

 

[Trenchfriend]

My Battle Vest:

View attachment 515550​

Buddy, this is asskickin'!

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

Just came to me.
Might be getting old(er), maybe just wiser but when you start carrying your Nitrostat bottle at home instead of just when you go somewhere.
B

 

[belfastboy]

…you realize that you will have bought more and more things for the last time in your life.

I freaked out the nice young lady at the Meindl shoe store. I finally had to retired my 25 year old Meindl walking shoes and said based on my experience with the existing pair this would be the last pair of shoes I would ever have to buy and want to make a good choice. She really had no idea what to do with the comment.

 

[GHT]

Last Sunday we had a plumbing failure, no water. It turned out to be a seizure of the mechanism that operates the ball cock in the header/incoming water tank, in the loft.
Mercifully a plumber agreed to call, he did just that and didn't overcharge, in fact he charged a very fair price.

By way of a thank you I wrote a letter, wording it so that if he wished, he could use it as a testimonial. Today he sent me a text. Complimenting my italic script handwriting he added that he was 42 years of age and my letter was the first time in his life that he had ever received such, hand written, with a fountain pen, in ink.

It got me thinking, once upon a time it was commonplace, but my plumber made a good point, I can't remember when I last received a hand written letter, let alone one written in ink with a fountain pen. Am I getting old, or what?

 

[Tiki Tom]

I freaked out the nice young lady at the Meindl shoe store. I finally had to retired my 25 year old Meindl walking shoes and said based on my experience with the existing pair this would be the last pair of shoes I would ever have to buy and want to make a good choice. She really had no idea what to do with the comment.

A month or so ago, I bought another wooden tiki to add to the collection above my bar. I was at an antique (junk) shop. The lady and I chit chatted for a while and, in parting I said something like “I’m sure this is not the last time you will see this tiki. In a few years my daughter will probably bring my whole tiki collection to you.”
She was horrified and admonished me to not talk like that.

 

[tonyb]

… Am I getting old, or what?

Yes

 

[tonyb]

You find yourself at the Safeway during the 11 a.m. hour on a Tuesday (the slackest time of the week, according to a friend retired after a career in the supermarket business), and note that it’s among the few occasions of late where you are actually younger than most others present.

And the piped-in music? Joe Cocker’s cover of “With a Little Help from My Friends.” It occurs to you that the recording was made 50-some years ago.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

You find yourself at the Safeway during the 11 a.m. hour on a Tuesday (the slackest time of the week, according to a friend retired after a career in the supermarket business), and note that it’s among the few occasions of late where you are actually younger than most others present.

And the piped-in music? Joe Cocker’s cover of “With a Little Help from My Friends.” It occurs to you that the recording was made 50-some years ago.

I remember seeing the Woodstock movie when it was released and thinking to myself how old Joe Cocker looked. (He was 35 years old at the time and looked like he spent every day of his life there.) Now I'm almost twice that age!

 

[GHT]

I remember seeing the Woodstock movie when it was released and thinking to myself how old Joe Cocker looked. (He was 35 years old at the time and looked like he spent every day of his life there.) Now I'm almost twice that age!

Don't worry K/N. The Royal Shakespeare Company has welcomed a cast almost exclusively aged over 70 to perform As You Like It from next month. Veteran actors Celia Bannerman, 78, Michael Bertenshaw, 77, Malcolm Sinclair and Geraldine James, both 72, will play Phoebe, Oliver, Orlando and Rosalind respectively.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...-recruits-cast-70-new-production-Like-It.html
Given that the play is an ode to young love, there must be hope for those of us known as baby boomers. Speaking of young love in your 70's, I see that Lothario, Robert De Niro, aged 79. announced this week that he has welcomed his seventh child.

 

[Edward]

Last Sunday we had a plumbing failure, no water. It turned out to be a seizure of the mechanism that operates the ball cock in the header/incoming water tank, in the loft.
Mercifully a plumber agreed to call, he did just that and didn't overcharge, in fact he charged a very fair price.

By way of a thank you I wrote a letter, wording it so that if he wished, he could use it as a testimonial. Today he sent me a text. Complimenting my italic script handwriting he added that he was 42 years of age and my letter was the first time in his life that he had ever received such, hand written, with a fountain pen, in ink.

It got me thinking, once upon a time it was commonplace, but my plumber made a good point, I can't remember when I last received a hand written letter, let alone one written in ink with a fountain pen. Am I getting old, or what?

I have my undergraduates sign in to tutorials on paper rather than waste time during class filling in the database online. It's amazing how many of them will often have to borrow a pen in order to be able to sign in. I mean, all my work coms and contents are on-screen too, but the idea of being without a pen and all my scribbled, handwritten note, and my diary..... Does. Not. Compute.

Pre-pandemic, when we still had real exams (we're now in a prolonged period of stand-off between a senior management which prefers open-book, online tests because they are cheaper and more popular with our customer base, and academics on the ground dealing with the dross end of students who cheat because they can), I used to have students who would panic coming up to exams because they'd not had to handwrite anything of any length for the past year. They did actually commit things to memory, though.... I'm teaching kids now who did their entire degrees during and post Covid; they've never had to do a closed book exam, and the extreme paucity of what they actually commit to memory as a result is horrific.

You find yourself at the Safeway during the 11 a.m. hour on a Tuesday (the slackest time of the week, according to a friend retired after a career in the supermarket business), and note that it’s among the few occasions of late where you are actually younger than most others present.

And the piped-in music? Joe Cocker’s cover of “With a Little Help from My Friends.” It occurs to you that the recording was made 50-some years ago.

I always remember that as the theme from The Wonder Years.

I remember seeing the Woodstock movie when it was released and thinking to myself how old Joe Cocker looked. (He was 35 years old at the time and looked like he spent every day of his life there.) Now I'm almost twice that age!

I had similar with Kurt Cobain. Cobain was about seven years older than me - enough to be a lifetime when I was in my late teens. He always seemed very much an elder statesman of the altrock stuff we listened to in those days, even when he died at 27. I look back at him now I'm 48 (and it's the same with others who passed on young before - Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison....), and he looks like a haunted, lost little boy in those photos. 27 seems like nothing, barely an adult. I'd have been in my mid thirties when Amy Winehouse died (also at 27), and it was the same shock at how tragically young she was. Funny how perspective shifts like that. Reminds me of watching Stand By Me when I was just a year or two older than the kids in it. Loved that film. Then about twenty years later I saw it again, as an adult in my middle thirties. It was a completely different film.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I have my undergraduates sign in to tutorials on paper rather than waste time during class filling in the database online. It's amazing how many of them will often have to borrow a pen in order to be able to sign in. I mean, all my work coms and contents are on-screen too, but the idea of being without a pen and all my scribbled, handwritten note, and my diary..... Does. Not. Compute.

Pre-pandemic, when we still had real exams (we're now in a prolonged period of stand-off between a senior management which prefers open-book, online tests because they are cheaper and more popular with our customer base, and academics on the ground dealing with the dross end of students who cheat because they can), I used to have students who would panic coming up to exams because they'd not had to handwrite anything of any length for the past year. They did actually commit things to memory, though.... I'm teaching kids now who did their entire degrees during and post Covid; they've never had to do a closed book exam, and the extreme paucity of what they actually commit to memory as a result is horrific.




I always remember that as the theme from The Wonder Years.
older than me - enough to be a lifetime when I was in my late teens. He always seemed very much an elder states





I had similar with Kurt Cobain. Cobain was about seven years
man of the altrock stuff we listened to in those days, even when he died at 27. I look back at him now I'm 48 (and it's the same with others who passed on young before - Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison....), and he looks like a haunted, lost little boy in those photos. 27 seems like nothing, barely an adult. I'd have been in my mid thirties when Amy Winehouse died (also at 27), and it was the same shock at how tragically young she was. Funny how perspective shifts like that. Reminds me of watching Stand By Me when I was just a year or two older than the kids in it. Loved that film. Then about twenty years later I saw it again, as an adult in my middle thirties. It was a completely different film.

Open book is fine for civil procedural chapter and verse but an essay format is my sure pick.
A professor once wrote our text for American History with only closed book multi-choice exam and text itself
encyclopedic fact filled. A fun read but hardly inclined to commit to memory. Bombed. We spoke afterwards
and I recited my complaint with shilling trivia tests. Stayed away from that dog ever on. Pity, he wasn't bad.