You know you’re getting old when someone begins a sentence with “when I was your age” and you don’t roll your eyes.
You’re REALLY getting old when it’s you beginning the sentence.
You know the possible endings of that sentence based on the generation uttering the phrase.
From my grandmother (born in the late 1800s): “When I was your age, I had to walk five miles through the woods and over a frozen stream to get to school, after getting up at 4 to chop wood and milk the cows.”
From my father (born in the Depression): “When I was your age, I had to walk a mile to get to the bus stop with my nine brothers and sisters, and half the time it didn’t come, and then we had to go back home and work in the tobacco fields.”
From me (born in the ‘50s): “When I was your age, the idea that you could have two telephones, a video camera, a digital camera and photo “album” that stored hundreds of photos, a calculator, a calendar with endless years’ worth of entries, an address book with thousands of names and phone numbers, storage for the contents of several hundred books, a music player that lets you store all your favorite songs that you can listen to at will, a device that tells you exactly where to turn to get to where you want to go and an appliance that allows you to connect a computer (which you can hold on your lap) to anywhere in the world -- all in your purse – and yet, YOU STILL CAN NOT FIND THE RINGING PHONE WHILE YOU ARE DRIVNG DOWN THE INTERSTATE BECAUSE IT IS SO SMALL, I would have ROTFALMAO!
When I say things like this to my three kids, ages 19 to 32, I get the eye roll and shrug, as in, so? I’m sorry, but this blows my old mind. Why in my lifetime, I’ve used chamber pots and Johnny houses – and I don’t mean Porta-potties – to go to the bathroom. Not only at my grandmother’s house, but at my parents’ house until I was about 3. I remember having a party line on the telephone – that you had to dial with your finger in a circle – which meant that you had to share your phone with everybody in the neighborhood. Probably why fewer people had affairs back then.
I’ve sipped water drawn from a well at my great-uncle’s house, and then had a grand time playing with a June bug that had a string he tied around it’s leg (uh-oh … hope PETA isn’t reading). I remember when we didn’t have a TV, and I remember when my cousin stuck various colored films over the screen to simulate color TV. I’ve brushed my teeth with baking soda and salt because it was cheaper than toothpaste. (My dad was really tight.)
And as far as that goes, I remember when my now-23-year-old was a baby and we splurged on a $1,000 video camera that was as big, clunky and heavy as a frozen turkey. It had a fraction of the capability that my little Flip camera now has, which was a ninth of the cost in actual dollars, NOT allowing for inflation.
Am I weird that this blows my mind, and that it blows my mind that it doesn’t blow the kids’ minds? True, I’m so easily amused and impressed by technology that a zipper can fascinate me for hours, just watching the little teeth go through the head separately on one side, and connected on the other. But still. Isn’t one lifetime really fast for this much stuff to be invented?
And we haven’t even talked about the internet or the Clapper!
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