Something obscure that makes you feel old?

[Anonymous]

I grew up in Ireland, which has been way behind the US in…everything! So even though I’m only 50, I experienced things like having a milkman, going through university without ever touching a computer, and sending and receiving telegrams (not just for a gag but as a legitimate form of communication). My grandparents’ house had an outhouse. Pictures of me as a baby and toddler look like something from the Great Depression in America. I tell co-workers who are grown adults things about my life and they think I am joking—that’s when I feel ancient.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I remember Hat Racks under the seats at movie theaters.

Men always wore their hats when on a proper night out. The seats in movie theater had slots to hold hat upside down during movie under seat so did not get squished.

If you look under an old movie seat and you see like two metal rails or slots that is what it is for.

I also remember smoking on the plane and train!

I don't remember hat racks, but I definitely remember smoking on planes. There was a period—maybe all of the '80s?—when planes had "non-smoking sections." Guess how well that worked.

Yes, and watching all the people in the non smoking walking to the back of the plane to smoke.

Planes had smoking sections well into the 90s. I think they finally ended around 96 or 97. On family trips to Europe in the early to mid 90s planes still had smoking sections because it seemed like we always ended up in the rows just before the smoking section began.

Yup, and I seem to remember an early-90s Lufthansa flight where the smoking section was half the plane back to front, divided by the center aisle.

I remember this. I always wondered -- how is one row up from smoking really making a difference when the back half is smoking like chimneys.

A no smoking section on a plane is like a no peeing section of a pool!

Given how totally strange smoking in public places seems now—it is hard to believe how recent the ban on smoking in bars is in VA. 1/1/2009. Obama was about to be inaugurated.

[Anonymous]

Caught a clip of 2000s show One tree hill and did a double take when I saw one of the mom characters. She used to be old…how did she get so young?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just saw that Jason Mesnick's (Bachelor) son Ty just started college. That one hit.

I know technology has changed and people can't smoke anywhere but ouch, I wasn't prepared for this one.

[Anonymous]

In 1986 when Mets wonWorld Series Keith Hernandez was a two pack a day smoker.

You can see him in dugout between innings smoking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Caught a clip of 2000s show One tree hill and did a double take when I saw one of the mom characters. She used to be old…how did she get so young?!

A childhood neighborhood friend shared a bunch of pictures on facebook from the early 90s, including of neighborhood gatherings, and I was looking at the photos of all the 40-something mothers and then it hit me that these mothers are all now in their 70s and at least one has died. Then I did a double take in realizing all those kids in the photos are now in their early to mid 40s, the same age as our mothers were! How did that happen?! The pictures still looked so real as if they had been taken yesterday and I could just fly back to my old hometown and still see all the same families and parents and friends come out of their houses.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I turned 50 this year and despite the enormous amount of time that's passed, I still feel 'young'. I'm watching this Netflix documentary about this crime ring and they're spending a fair amount of discussing air-cards. I remember when they came out and how game-changing it was for work and now they are no longer. I think that hit me more than CDs and landlines because the lifecycle was so short in reality. Just a random observation.

? I don't even know what an air card is and I'm your age.

Pretty sure that's what we call the "card" that plugged into our laptops so we could work remotely away from the office where we'd use an ether cable. I think it used a cell signal. We didn't have smart phones, so the concept was new. Where I worked you really had to have a need for one (e.g,. you weren't allowed to plug into your client's system), because the devices were pricey.

Yes, this is correct. It was Wi-fi before Wi-fi. Totally obsolete now but at the time it was magical.

[Anonymous]

My eighty year old mother has enjoyed great health and a lot of happiness and contentment. I noticed a couple of days ago that she was having trouble writing down something I was telling her. Then yesterday she turned to me and said, “I’m getting old.” I couldn’t sleep last night because it hit me that the road ahead is full of questions and likely decline. It made me feel old myself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I echo the observation that in 1995, 1979 seemed like an ancient world inhabited by strange people wearing ugly fashion and using primitive technology, but now I'm much further away from 1995 than I was from 1979 in 1995! Kids must think my 1995 was a strange world inhabited by people wearing ugly clothes and using primitive technology! I did ask my 11 year old nephew if he thought we looked weird in photos from the 1990s and he said yes. It made me both pause and laugh!

Smoking is the one thing that utterly transformed in terms of perception and noticeability. I remember smoking on planes and being stuck in the last row of the non-smoking section in front of a cigar smoker. I remember smoking in malls and restaurants and the smell on teachers when they came in from a cigarette break. I am HS class of '98 and it seemed like at least half my senior class at a fancy prep school smoked. But today? I recently happened to be at a gas station buying a bottle of water and it occurred to me that the cigarette rack is a lot smaller that it used to be. And I never see youths smoking. At all. Not even sneaking a contraband cigarette. And the less people smoke, the more those who still do stand out and the sharper the smell is.

On the other hand, the sight of all the young people with tattoos seems so very bizarre and weird to me.

But what really has changed is technology. In the 1990s we didn't have to keep track of innumerable passwords and deal with two step verifications every time we logged online. Or chatbots. Healthcare is much more complicated and bureaucratic. Everything is one step forward but also one step backwards. Everything that was meant to make things easier for humans has only ended up making life more complicated and a hassle.

The technology changes are huge. We had far less to entertain us. There were 3 channels on the tv and most of it was boring. We only had a few radio stations in the 60s and it seemed like they played the same 6 bubblegum pop songs over and over. Then we got album oriented rock fm stations who played Stairway to Heaven at least 50 times a day. There were fewer movies released. We read constantly and that’s one of the things that is killing us now. I wonder how many books the under 30 s read.

[Anonymous]

Tori Amos turns 60 today.

[Anonymous]

Annual mammograms (no family history, so no early screening)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Going into a hospital and seeing all these doctors in their late 20s and early 30s. The guy doing my vasectomy is a decade younger than me!

The judge in Trump & Co.’s Fulton County trial graduated from law school in 2013.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Going into a hospital and seeing all these doctors in their late 20s and early 30s. The guy doing my vasectomy is a decade younger than me!

The judge in Trump & Co.’s Fulton County trial graduated from law school in 2013.

He's had a productive decade!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boys don't wear jeans anymore. So many boys are wearing athletic pants. I think they all look awful and sloppy.

Oh, yes, clothing has definitely changed from the 1990s. No one wears sweaters anymore except for lightweight merinos. I had dozens of gorgeous wool sweaters and at some point I must have stopped wearing them and they lingered in boxes for a decade before I finally got rid of them. It's all polar fleeces in the winter these days. Our modern clothes are much lighter than the clothes of the 1980s and 1990s thanks to new fabric technology. I saw an episode of Will and Grace the other day from their first season and even I could see that Will's suit is, by modern eyes, too big and loose and heavy looking compared to the modern suits. If you wear suits these days. In my fancy consulting firms most men don't wear suits any more unless it's an important client meeting and half the time they wear upscale sneakers with suits! Formality in clothing really has faded away, with some regret.

But I'm glad the cargo shorts died out. I never liked the cargo shorts look.

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I miss wool sweaters. I loved them and still have a bunch. I miss the way clothes smelled good when you bought them from a nice department store. Also people who worked at the stores tended to work there forever so you knew people when you were shopping.

The first real job I had was in fast food as a teenager. Most of my coworkers were adults and had kids and homes and had worked at that fast food place for years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I grew up in Ireland, which has been way behind the US in…everything! So even though I’m only 50, I experienced things like having a milkman, going through university without ever touching a computer, and sending and receiving telegrams (not just for a gag but as a legitimate form of communication). My grandparents’ house had an outhouse. Pictures of me as a baby and toddler look like something from the Great Depression in America. I tell co-workers who are grown adults things about my life and they think I am joking—that’s when I feel ancient.

OMG I love you! You sound like my cousins in Northern Ireland!