You know you are getting old when:

[GHT]

I really must upgrade my phone, I hear that they come with push button numbers these days.

Tina & I had an appointment at our doctors this morning. We had our winter flu inoculation, along with every other geriatric on the doctor's books. All the grey haired patients waiting in line looked like a pack of Q-Tips.

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Zip-Around-Purse"

Okay...
Didn't we call it "pencil case"?? Later, when the new fashionable (unseparated) came, it was called a "throw-in" in old Germany.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Uuum, LED-fireplace? Without sound??

 

[Trenchfriend]

Remember, when a "function shirt" or "sports shirt" was called just by it's real name "cotton/polyester shirt"?

 

[GHT]

If you can remember licking the back of the stamp before sticking it on the envelope you must be old.
But to feel really ancient can you remember when.......................

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you remember 91 Octane benzine in Germany.

 

[EngProf]

If you can remember licking the back of the stamp before sticking it on the envelope you must be old.
But to feel really ancient can you remember when.......................

View attachment 554448

You're just a young whippersnapper if you think that sign is old.
How about "premium" for 29.9 to feed my 1960's muscle car?
It had enough octane (and lead) to support 11:1 compression ratio.

 

[Edward]

Kids today are wimps. I could curse like a drunken Naval sailor before I was seven years old.

I learned *all* my best swears from kids under the age of ten. Still do.

One of my first words was "s**t,* and it's still a regular part of my vocabulary. How could it not be, given my mother's talent for vigorous language?

Meanwhile, I have felt extremely unsettled over the past week. We have been screening the reissue of the 1980s Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense," and I find it genuinely distressing that everyone -- *everyone* -- who has come to see it looks likes my grandparents. Yes, I know I'm about the age my grandparents were when I knew them, but it's a complete mental disconnect for me to see elderly people enthusing over what seems, to me, to be something for college kids. That's not what old people are supposed to like. Old people sing songs from the turn of the century. Old people sing "Ta Ra Ra Boom De Ay" and "Put On Your Old Gray Bonnet," not "Once In A Lifetime."

We have a Joan Baez documentary coming later this month, and I'm making sure the defibrillator is ready, just in case.

A few weeks ago I went to see The Undertones live, and caught myself thinking - "Why are there suddenly all these old people at gigs I'm going to?" As odd to me as being in hospital for a few days the week before that and seeing all these old men who were born the same year I was. Madness.

View attachment 552190
I really must upgrade my phone, I hear that they come with push button numbers these days.

If you don't fancy push buttons, or even a touch screen, a rotary dial is a real option:

This Rotary Cell Phone Actually Works and You Can Buy It | Digital Trends

An engineer has created a working cell phone that includes a rotary dial instead of a display. It’s available for $240, though you’ll have to build it yourself.

www.digitaltrends.com

This is genuinely an actual product you can buy. I'm sorely tempted to pick one up with a cheap PAYG sim just for taking to events and places where it might be handy to receive calls but I don't need to dial out much....

Of course, if I can be sure of having the carry-space, this is even more tempting...

Again, a genuine product! Tempted to get one of these for the home office when it's properly finished, and give them that number at work...

It does amuse me, though, that all the sales blurb for these on the web talks about making phone calls "just like in the Sixties" - as if these weren't the norm well into the eighties. I remember our first push-button landline in about 1982/83, and we were significantly early adopters as Dad then worked for GPO Telephones / British Telecom.

 

[GHT]

This one is a mock up, but even so, how cool does it look.

You were right with your comment Edward: "just like in the Sixties." We moved into our current address in 1998 and inherited this phone.

It's still connected and still works perfectly, but being lazy, we have another that has all the regular numbers that we call kept in a memory so that we have no need to dial, or to be precise, button press, other than one or two digits.


This one, an original Bakelite, is no longer connected, nowadays it's a showpiece.

 

[KILO NOVEMBER]

You remember this from 1992:

I was nearly 40 years old when this appeared.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Haha, stupid kids, complaing about empty batteries in the headphones.

My headphones got cables, no batteries...

 

[Trenchfriend]

Kids today are wimps.

But one funny thing:
The video fo Chris Isaaks Wicked Game was seen as "normal", back then, as I remember.

Todays youngsters look ashamed and think, this must be 18+ stuff, hahaha...

 

[Trenchfriend]

If these kids, today still know, what a splint/cotter is?

 

[Trenchfriend]

Tell me, HOW did we survive the 90s with omnibus cash only??

Jeesus, senior moment, two hours ago...

 

[tonyb]

When you're always paying attention not to launch any adult joking in front of kids.

“Dirty” jokes were the Old Man’s version of sex education. I was hearing them years and years before I was old enough to appreciate those jokes on anything but a superficial level.

 

[tonyb]

You're just a young whippersnapper if you think that sign is old.
How about "premium" for 29.9 to feed my 1960's muscle car?
It had enough octane (and lead) to support 11:1 compression ratio.

I recall gas prices dipping into the teens of cents per gallon during early- to mid-1960s “gas wars.”

 

[Trenchfriend]

Hobo knife, anyone?

I never had one, but the only use for me would be to have the spoon for eating cake in train. I wouldn't need the fork, nor a can opener, nor a corkscrew.
Ok, it could leave the fork at home, only carrying the spoon with, if I would like to get one of these knifes.

 

[Trenchfriend]

And remember the days, when the daughters were oversminked, NOT their moms??

 

[Trenchfriend]

TuneUp Utilities on Windows XP, remember?

 

[Trenchfriend]

My loungers, yesterday in electronic-chain store, next to the classic mp3-players:

THREE "discmans" , indeed!!

Three B-quality ones, but I just don't get, why they should have a comeback. They still suck too much power, to be senseful. And they were never handy.

Why there are no cassette-walkmans, they always ran as long as mp3-players, up to ten hours. I loved my very compact Panasonic walkman, but it didn't last very long.