You know you are getting old when:

[tonyb]

It was something like 45 years ago when I planted myself in an otherwise unoccupied downtown office for a couple weekend days with a how-to-type book and a state-of-the-art IBM Selectric.

Did I learn how to properly type? Nope, ‘fraid not. But my poor typing skills did little to hamper my work as a hack for hire. I “keyboard” with four fingers and two thumbs. Those six digits know where to go without any assistance from eyes on the keyboard. Good enough for me.

 

[Jon Crow]

My first semester in college (1978) had punch cards, then typewriter terminals to write programs. I didn’t care much for it and bounced around a few majors before coming back to it (when tube TV terminals with keyboards were the norm). As soon as dial up was available I was connecting from home (at 360 baud rate) — but it wasn’t very useful.

My kids were brought up (late 1980s / 90s) with dial-up and the beep/boop/hiss associated with that. In fact we all still call our computers “boopers” within the family and have to explain that to outsiders on occasion.

You mentioned another Bob, tube tvs, my parents were proud when they got a big screen colour, it needed two hefty guys to bring it in haha massive wood surround, Sony I think it was, must have been pricey I guess, late 80s early 90s

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine."

Joan Collins

 

[Trenchfriend]

I think, you all know it. The moment on a bigger music event, when you think:

"Eh what, is this is a meeting of our local kindergardens? How old are these girls and boys around me??"

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you know the term to "drape something"...

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Grandpa, what's that thing in your hand?"

"That's my grocery list, honey."

"But why it looks so curious?"

"That's called paper, sweetheart. It doesn't need electricity. It's working on it's own. You don't need any battery."

"Wow, that's cool!"

 

[BobHufford]

 

[Trenchfriend]

Is anyone seeing people with Marlboro Light, these days??

Weren't they big thing, 35 years ago?

 

[GHT]

Even to myself, I sound old.
When I say things like “I graduated from university long before cell phones were invented” or “I remember dialing up the internet” or “when I started university I had an electric typewriter, when I graduated we all had primitive computers”, I sound like Fred Flintstone.

 

[tonyb]

Is anyone seeing people with Marlboro Light, these days??

Weren't they big thing, 35 years ago?

I was a smoker 35 years ago. I quit cold turkey in September of 2006 and haven’t had so much as a drag off a cigarette since. Back before I gave it up I sometimes smoked Marlboro Lights, but since then I’ve paid little attention to cigarette brands. But I hear that smoking, which was kinda expensive back before I quit, has become much more so since. If I smoked at the pace I once did, the habit would cost something in excess of $500 a month these days.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For that matter, when was the last time you even saw a cigarette ad other than a point-of-purchase sign on the tobacco cabinet in a store. Wasn't so long ago it seemed like half the advertising in newspapers and magazine pushed cigarettes, but now those ads are as gone as the radio and TV commercials. Maybe you might see a a chipped old Willie The Penguin sign saying ITS KOOL INSIDE on the door of some smalltown market, but even those types of ads are all but extinct.

 

[Edward]

For that matter, when was the last time you even saw a cigarette ad other than a point-of-purchase sign on the tobacco cabinet in a store. Wasn't so long ago it seemed like half the advertising in newspapers and magazine pushed cigarettes, but now those ads are as gone as the radio and TV commercials. Maybe you might see a a chipped old Willie The Penguin sign saying ITS KOOL INSIDE on the door of some smalltown market, but even those types of ads are all but extinct.

Is that legal restriction? Over here tobacco ads were banned gradually. Cigarette ads in TV were the first to go - I don't think they were ever on tV in my lifetime. Then in my early teens, broadcast cigar ads were banned. Far back as I can remember, cigarette ads couldn't carry the name or the brand, just opaque references. BY about a decade ago the final step was plain packaging: they all look the same (generic, dark grey box, name of the brand on the end, one of several different "You will die / your baby will die / you will get prematurely old / here's what your lungs look like" messages on the front. Even sports tobacco sponsorship is now banned. None of what I have any argument with. The next step is a planned law to ban anyone born after a certain date from ever being able to legally smoke. I suspect that'll fall by the wayside, though - the New Zealand law which inspired it was rapidly repealed within a few months of its passage.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^^
I view the gradual but pretty much steady decline in tobacco use over the past several decades as a model for a societal approach to harmful substances in general.

We didn’t have to ban tobacco outright, but we made it more difficult to push that drug (yes, it’s a drug) and to have the pushers and the users pay more of the cost we all share for the harm it does.

I recently looked at some clips from the old Flintstones animated TV program, which was current when I was a youngster. The show was sponsored by Winston cigarettes. Ads featured characters from the show smoking Winstons. It certainly made it look like something a person would want to do. And it was something I began doing myself not long after, at age 12. It didn’t take long to be hooked.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I have vivid memories of those in-character cigarette ads -- Jed Clampett and Granny were also avid Winston smokers, and Granny, especially, really puffed on them hard. I thought of those commercials when the actress who played her died of lung cancer. "Star Trek" was sponsored for a while by, I believe, VIceroys, but Gene Roddenberry put his foot down and we were spared the image of Mr. Spock lighting up on the bridge of the Enterprise.

Baseball broadcasts when I was growing up were absolutely permeated with tobacco ads -- White Owl Cigars was a big sponsor for the Red Sox, and I remember Ned Martin, the Boston broadcaster, once ad-libbing a reference to William Makepeace Thackeray into a White Owl commercial. I assume he was ad-libbing, tobacco ads were seldom very literate.

Cigar and chewing-tobacco advertising continued on radio and TV well after cigarette ads were banned in 1971, and I remember seeing them at least into the early 80s. I was startled not too long ago to hear a commercial for a smoke shop on radio -- they didn't mention any brands. or even any specific products, but it was obvious what their business was. I have often wondered what loophole in the laws they squeaked that thru, or if the radio station was even more unscrupulous than most of them are.

 

[Jon Crow]

Is that legal restriction? Over here tobacco ads were banned gradually. Cigarette ads in TV were the first to go - I don't think they were ever on tV in my lifetime. Then in my early teens, broadcast cigar ads were banned. Far back as I can remember, cigarette ads couldn't carry the name or the brand, just opaque references. BY about a decade ago the final step was plain packaging: they all look the same (generic, dark grey box, name of the brand on the end, one of several different "You will die / your baby will die / you will get prematurely old / here's what your lungs look like" messages on the front. Even sports tobacco sponsorship is now banned. None of what I have any argument with. The next step is a planned law to ban anyone born after a certain date from ever being able to legally smoke. I suspect that'll fall by the wayside, though - the New Zealand law which inspired it was rapidly repealed within a few months of its passage.

Very different from here in Spain Edward, we have Estanco tobacconist shops everywhere and still cigarette machines in the pub, non! in plain packaging

 

[Trenchfriend]

Tobacco advertising in radio/TV-spots forbidden since 1975 and printmedia since 2003 in old Germany (exluded special topic cases).

2003/33/EG

Killed the car magazines, back then. Pages drastically cut down. Bye bye, Auto, Motor und Sport...

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you're riding omnibus, time's heading for 2027, you listening to your mp3-player from 2007, enjoying T'Pau "Heart And Soul" from 1987...

Should I think about it??

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Hi, Grandpa!"

"Hello, my sweetheart!"

"Wow, this is very nice ring, you got on your hand!"

"Thanks, Honey. It's a new one, I bought yesterday in department store, downtown."

"What is a department store?"

"Uuum, uuuum, a little difficult to explain. Uuu, just give me a minute, Sweetheart".

 

[tonyb]

"Age is just a number. It's totally irrelevant unless, of course, you happen to be a bottle of wine."

Joan Collins

We’ve discussed before just how silly that notion is. A favorite uncle, in his later years, was fond of saying that. It was apparent he knew that the grim reaper was coming for him in the not-distant future and his way of coping was to deny it.

The last time I talked with him, a matter of weeks before he died, when he was housed in a “care facility,” he said “it could be one year; it could be 50 years.” That was the clearest sign to me that his vascular dementia diagnosis was accurate. He had never had difficulty with arithmetic before. His daughter told me that he had been more or less successfully faking being “okay” for a couple years before his acting skills began failing.

The ravages of advancing years are all too real. It’s clearly not “just a number.”

 

[Zombie_61]

I think, you all know it. The moment on a bigger music event, when you think:

"Eh what, is this is a meeting of our local kindergardens? How old are these girls and boys around me??"

You might find thoughts of this kind entering your mind from time to time now that you're getting older. Teens, Twenty-somethings and Thirty-somethings might become annoying at times, and you might find yourself agreeing with, or having thoughts that are more "in-line" with, people who are a little older than you (or more than a little). I'm pretty sure it's all part of the aging process, and I've been enjoying it. I'm creeping up on my 64th birthday, and the people in my life who have grown older with me (or close to it) are the people I value most.