Stuff that makes you feel OLD...

[fireheart]

Walking past my very first primary school and seeing how much it changed.

Seeing my OLDER classmates having children.

Seeing my oldest cousin having children.

Listening to a mother tell her child: "Let the lady through" (me)

Going to uni and looking around at all the little 18-year-olds who don't know the difference between the north and south sides of the lake.

[Rapscallion]

Grey pubes.

Talking to a mate and having to remind yourself that she's a grandmother.

Once basing expectations of how good a game is by the sheer number of floppies it came on.

Rapscallion

[Andrew B.]

Nickelodeon had things like Rugrats, Doug, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and Salute Your Shorts[/LIST]

I remember this stuff. Also seeing things like Friends on Nick at Night. BTW, I'm only 25 and I feel old looking at this stuff.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Grey pubes.

Talking to a mate and having to remind yourself that she's a grandmother.

Once basing expectations of how good a game is by the sheer number of floppies it came on.

Rapscallion

Good one raps. I thought of some other tech-related ones:

- Having to explain to someone that my first computer did not even HAVE a hard drive or Windows on it.

- The look I get when I tell a teenager I find this:

http://www.wihas.us/2011/10/walkman-...d.html/walkman

Cooler than an Iphone

- You remember what a pain in the ass it was to have to rewind the tape before you brought it back to the rental place.

[Seshat]

Remembering a childhood with no computers, no phones wiithout cords, no colour TV (well, I knew a very few people who had one), no cable, no DVDs or VHS, no MP3s or walkmen or even cassettes, no multi-plex cinemas, no Disneyworld (we did have Disneyland), no malls (just shopping centers, saw my first enclosed indoor mall in high school, it was so unique, they had the prom there), no seatbelts, no little hand-held hair dryers, no calculators, no video games, no microwaves (my high school home ec teacher saw one at a convention and raved for days, lol).

All of this.

Seeing 'retro 1970s' looks in magazines, and snorting to yourself because it's so very NOT what you grew up with.

Knowing what 'naugahyde' is.

[Severen13]

I remember:

* Getting up to the change the channel on the TV

* Having a rotary phone

* When walkmans were awesome

* Thinking the videotape rewinder was the coolest thing ever

* MTV played music videos

* When SNL was funny

* When Pierce Brosnan was "Remington Steele"

* Getting up in the middle of the night to see the royal wedding of Charles and Diana

* Watching "The Smurfs" and "The Real Ghostbusters" on Saturday mornings

* Ronald Reagan nearly getting killed for the love of Jodie Foster and being mad that Scooby-Doo wasn't on because of all the news about some boring old guy getting shot

* Thinking I was going to grow up and marry Ricky Schroeder

* Watching Friday Night Videos

* Everyone being all up in arms about Madonna's racy act and how she was going to cause the fall of Western Civilization as we know it

* Playing "Space Invaders" on the Atari game system

* Buying U2's "The Joshua Tree". That album turned 25 this month. I am so old.....

[Mikkel]

Heh. My parents first phone had a handle you turned to call the central. I remember being so impressed when the central got automatised and they got a phone with a dial.
I remember the milkman coming in a horse drawn milk cart, ringing a bell and being send out to fetch milk in a pail.
I remember too hating milk in the summer because we didn't have a fridge. The cellar just didn't keep the milk cold enough.

ETA Here is a picture of the milkman . I tried googling and damned if there wasn't a picture of my childhoods milkman, though it must be after the dairy began bottling the milk.

[tropicsgoddess]

What makes me feel old.....

remembering what life was like before smart phones and when the fanciest things you could have on your cellphone were texting, color screens and if you were lucky: playing snake or any game on your phone.

When doctors and drug dealers weren't the only ones that had beepers/pagers

The same Disney classics that are now released on DVD/Blu Ray ....I have them in VHS

When Doug, Rugrats and Ren & Stimpy were on Nickelodeon...and SNICK!

When me and everyone in school looked forward to playing Oregon Trail on the computer (along with Word Munchers)

Remembering what life was like before and after Napster....and that the only way to get your favorite songs for free (pre-Napster days) was to record them from the radio on your boombox with your blank cassettes.

When portable music consisted of the walkman or discman.

[Victory Sabre]

[*]Nickelodeon had things like Rugrats, Doug, Are You Afraid of the Dark, and Salute Your Shorts[/LIST]

I remember when Nick had great shows like You Can't Do That On Television, and The Tomorrow People.

Just got the final 3 DVDs of TTP, and am working on them. Those were the days.

[Jester]

You know what makes me feel old?

Spring Break.

Because these days, I really AM old enough to be these girls' father!

Not, mind you, that that would stop me having fun with any of them....


Also, people who say things like, "Yeah, I used to party like you, but I grew out of it." And they're only 22 or so. Little smartassses!

This doesn't make me feel old so much as it cracks me up....seeing people I think look old and that I won't have to card...and finding out that they are much younger than me.

There was no Food Network

[hushed tone] The Dark Times.....

my 20 year high school reunion is next year...

Mine was in '08, but I didn't go. Two basic reasons, really. One, it was my 3rd of 3 high schools, I was only there my senior year, and most of my friends were underclassmen, so wouldn't be at the reunion. The second reason was I had a chance to go to see my beloved Raiders in their home stadium for the first time, and be up front in the Black Hole. That was a month before the reunion, and I could afford to do just one.

I went to the game, naturally.

I remember when Eddie Murphy was actually funny.

"Kill my landlord. C-I-L-L...my landlord."

What's now getting to me is that co-workers are being hired who were not only born in the year I got my first car, but they have 10 years experience already in the field!

ME: "Man, I'm getting old."
COWORKER: "You're not that old."
ME: "Hell, there are people working here who weren't even BORN when I started in the food service industry!"
CW: "Not me!"
ME: "Yes, you. I started doing this in 1986. When were you born?"
CW: "....19...88. Man, you ARE old!"
ME: "Shut it."

Even worse is when you meet someone younger than you who has grandchildren.

Oh, I had great fun with this one, actually. My best friend Neets has a 19 year old daughter, Bug, who just gave birth to a son. Neets is only 38. (She had Bug when she was 19...family tradition, I guess.) But when I was back home in Arizona this last September and Bug was only a month away from popping, I turned to Neets and said, "You know what's really funny? You're gonna be a grandmother before I'm even a father."

She smacked me.

* Thinking I was going to grow up and marry Ricky Schroeder

You and my little sister both....and certainly several thousand other women of the same age.

[Bionic Hobbit]

You bunch of young whippersnappers

I remember a lot of things but this column made me remember things i have forgotten:
- Watching the first Star Trek (OS) TV episode debut
- Watching the first Flintstones and Jetsons
- Getting my first computer TRS-80
- Having rabbit ears on our first TV. Dad gave up using it after one week and had an antenna installed. We went from 2 channels to 6
- Getting up to change channels. Planning the evening's TV watching was a family gathering using both the TV Guide and the newspaper guide.
- Gas at $0.39 an imperial gallon for premium
- The Imperial gallon
- Canadian flag was the Red Ensign
- US flag with 48 stars
- Atlas maps with parts of Africa marked as unexplored
- World maps with just over 100 nations
- My first motorcycle Honda 175 Scrambler.
- Watching "American Restoration" and seeing the larger engine version as a restoration project
- Seeing TV ads for "Mr. Machine", "Johnny 7, One Man Army", "Barbie" in the striped bathing suit, "Barbie's Dream House" made of cardboard and assembling the one my sister got and ....

Oh it hurts! Memory overload! Grab the remote and vegitate time. What's on? History Channel..."American Restoration"

*whimper*

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Thought of a few more:

- Awhile back I was showing a kid my old Nintendo Gameboy. One of the originals, like this:



So he was trying to play it and he kept smacking the screen and getting frustrated at the game. He finally looked at me and said: "Why doesn't this thing work properly?"

Then it dawned on me: He thought it had a TOUCH SCREEN.

Also here's a good one: At the first house I lived in we had a TV in our basement that did NOT have a remote control. Just VHF and UHF dials, baby.

One more: I was trying to get a 14 year-old to grasp the idea of how cool game arcades used to be, like back in the 80s and then again in the early 90s when Street Fighter II first came out. He just couldn't believe kids would voluntarily hang out at such a place.

[Jester]

Canadian flag was the Red Ensign

Wait, what? It wasn't always the red and white tri-stripe with the red maple leaf?

What? I'm American. I'm allowed to not know random things about the Canadian flag, damn it!

World maps with just over 100 nations

I will never forget the world map my grandmother had in her house, which listed "Persia." For those of you not familiar with history, Persia is the former name of Iran.

Also here's a good one: At the first house I lived in we had a TV in our basement that did NOT have a remote control. Just VHF and UHF dials, baby.

Amusingly, that entire sentence could have been written by me and been completely accurate.

I was trying to get a 14 year-old to grasp the idea of how cool game arcades used to be, like back in the 80s and then again in the early 90s when Street Fighter II first came out. He just couldn't believe kids would voluntarily hang out at such a place.

Voluntarily? Are you kidding me? Great place for kids to waste their time doing nothing worthwhile. Trust me, I know, as I was a frequent time waster in such places. Hell, I remember when arcades were considered one of the things that were "destroying" American youth. They were major contributors to delinquency and criminal behavior, if you remember the critics' comments!

[KiaKat]

Thought of a few more:

- Awhile back I was showing a kid my old Nintendo Gameboy. One of the originals, like this:

I have one of those! It still works, too!

You made my husband snort his root beer with the touchscreen comment, btw.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

When me and everyone in school looked forward to playing Oregon Trail on the computer (along with Word Munchers)

I just found a site that lets you play Word Munchers and Number Munchers on your computer.

I got a score of over 20,000 on Number Munchers before deciding to call it quits. I do have to work tomorrow, ya know.

I used to LOOOOVE playing that and and all the other MECC games. Probably too much.

Not git off mah lawn.

*stumbles, falls, breaks hip

I've fallen and I can't get up.