Things that make you feel old.

[Wen-Astar]

@Ilaekae
That covers with what I know of these diseases. I am old enough to have recieved Tuberculosis innoculations, and while I won't subject my offspring to that drama, he will recieve all others.

Some years ago, a chinese exchange student got chicken pox three days after arrival. At first I laughed, but after I got to know what complications may arise if a grown-up contracts the disease for the first time, it was no longer funny.
People just have no respect anymore for these illnesses. It's what children used to contract, not anything that is in their purview. Now everyone is staring at the rise in allergies and blaming inoculations for it.
*That* is really strange.

Sabin is an active inoculation, Salk only works with non-living polio germs (is that the right word?) and is therefore passive and does not keep as long. Now I have to check the vaccination books ...

[cricketts801]

I watched Voltron and the original Thundercats as a kid. Yea i'm old.

[Ilaekae]

liked the Thundercats...

[Carnifex]

saturday morning cartoons has kinda lost its meaning by now...are there even such things left?

[Max Challie]

Every time i injure myself, only then can i understand frailty.

Oh and Quake 3 > everything by id

[Wooly ESS]

Ilaekae:
Polio, he said, was not really that dangerous. I begged to differ.

Your differing is justified. Polio was an absolute scourge when I was a child. Parents kept their children home from school during polio epidemics. It killed kids, and crippled those who survived. If you meet someone over 60 years old who is dragging their leg, he/she probably had polio as a child.

Death from childhood disease has been a major control on human population over human history. The massive population explosion of the
20th century has largely been the result of eradicating chilhood disease.

It dumfounds me that people have forgotten that!

[iasr]

More than media, values, or world events my lower back is the most blatant indicator of my advancing years: ten years ago, I could lift just about anything worth lifting in the most awkward configuration of ergonomics possible. Now if the back is even slightly bent, the lower lumbar muscles turn to knotted ropes for days.

That and hangovers: never really suffered them until the late 20's. And that's for the best. Grown ups don't really have time to be hungover.

[Black Spot]

I am 7 hours and 23 minutes (or less) younger than the oldest living Baby Boomer.

I remember when Joseph Stalin died.

When I first saw television, it was ALL LIVE in black and white.

My family got their first phone when I was 20 (rotary).

Still own my first "pocket" calculator--the first Texas Instruments calculator. It cost me $379.00+. Its modern equivalent can often be bought for less than a dollar.

I definitely remember when it was illegal to marry somebody of another race, and illegal to show a movie that had black/white kissing, in many states.

I remember a wooden commercial sternwheeler catching fire and exploding about a mile and a half from my house.

I remember riding a massive wooden streetcar through three counties for 25¢ as normal.

I remember vegetable sellers, scissor and knife repair/sharpening, and rag pickers coming to our house, and feeding their horses apples and bread while they talked to my mother.

I remember when there was no such thing as...

• Rock and Roll
• Lasers
• Transistor radios
• PCs of any kind
• Color television
• Microwave ovens
• Acrylic and Vinyl Artists' paints (I was actually part of a test group in 1965 to see if these would be acceptable to professional artists.)
• Commercial nuclear power
• A cure for polio (I went to school with 12 kids who had survived polio but were physically disabled because of it)
• Vinyl/plastic records
• Satellites
• Turnpikes
• Helvetica (type font)

The first picture below (off web reference) is how we heated our house when I was in grade school, (2) our first television (second hand from an uncle), and (3) my first camera (mine was made in US).

Does this help explain why I sometimes seem confused by all the talk of games/movie/TV/music here?

Thank you for making me feel young. My first scientific calculator was £25, rock and roll was old hat, my father was working on an early nuclear power station when I was born (might explain a lot), no kids at school with polio although my mother's best friend had it, and no satellites. The rest I remember well.

[Wooly ESS]

Hah! You kids and your "old" computers. THIS is an old computer! It's made mostly from renewable resources and has a zero carbon footprint. I did a five year degree in geophysics with it (that and an HB pencil).

A Hughes Owen slide rule!

[CrinaC]

tumbler for some reason it makes me feel old, like I'm starting to get left behind on the times. I know the point of it is to make friends and such but I find it kinda odd. I guess I'm still use to how I made friends in high school, talk to them in person first then add them into all your web social stuff and things. No one really talks on the phone anymore....

[Damien Levs]

Thundercats in the 80s, The first Iraq war. Margaret Thatcher. The first games console I had was Pong...the only game on it. Loading ZX Spectrum games, then going to have your dinner while waiting for it and an awesome game on Amiga called Agony. Which was about a wizard who got turned into an owl. Super game.

[Trixtar]

Be in a classroom where half of them are sitting in the back playing pokémon if not being on FB as if games and chatting online is a natural part of class-environment!
-And yes, they are 20-22 years old!!!!
I have been in a group project with 3 of that kind... Guess how that went!

Seems like a lot happened in 8 years...

[Angel Intheuk]

I feel neither young nor old reading this thread now Though I remember my dad experimenting with his new SLR 35mm film camera when we were kids and there's loads of photos of us with the 'new fangled' effects which basically consisted of one main portrait in the middle and 5 other me's circling my head...if I can find it I'll post it. He was so excited I just thought it was strange.

Also I understand now why my dad (57) was so excited about getting his knife sharpener and then going round his neighbours and offering to sharpen their knives and they were all excited too. I never knew about that service before, you know it could make a comeback my knives at home are so blunt, might visit my dad soon

[Ilaekae]

Hahahahaha...

Considering the fact that a dull knife is the single most dangerous tool in most homes, I would love it if your dad got himself a chuckwagon and horse and headed over my way. The people around here use a spoon to cut things because it's sharper than their cooking knives...and I'll have apples for the critter.

[Wen-Astar]

Erm, Ilaekae, get a whetting stone and use it?

But that only works good on forged steel knifes.

A friend of mine once had a fit of frustration with the knifes in a holiday home she had rented, and sharpened every single one of them. The landlord asked her afterwards not to do it again. He almost lost a finger with a grab into the knife drawer.

Wooly ESS: Oh yes, I had one of these after I killed my last pocket calculator by sitting on it. I was quicker with the slide rule than I was with the small computer. Actually, I think I need huge machines to work with, otherwise, it won't work.

[JFierce]

First time I've ever had back pain in my life. Thats a thing that makes me feel old despite not being old. (Makes me dread what will happen to my back when I get older) Ironically I remember on the news segments about childrens crazy book weight and back problems after middle and high school. I believe that 100% now.

In my school we had little to no time to get to our lockers, I sucked at opening them. So I just carried around these giant backpacks the whole time. Stuffed with all my books as many did.


If I have kids they're getting a wheeled suitcase to carry their books in class. The school complains I'm marching right into the principals office and exclaiming fuck you.

[bish0p2004]

Checking out everyone's public profiles and seeing all the 20 year olds...

[Turaziel]

David Duchovny is "that guy from Californication"

[Black Spot]

Wooly, I never used a slide rule. We were meant to use log tables, but I preferred doing it with pen and paper, and annoying my teacher by doing my long division to about 30 decimal places - he couldn't check it without doing it himself.

[Psychotime]

David Duchovny is "that guy from Californication"

You better mean X-Files.

[alesoun]

Polio? My sis (5 years older than me) caught it when she was 3. Think she was one of the last wave. She used to beat me up with her crutches. Knocked me out cold once. I probably deserved it.

Had to have a tetanus jab a couple of weeks ago (sharp sissors, Kitteh, not a blunt knife) and it's a triple... tetanus, polio and something else. Hurts like a bitch, and I feel old because I can't remember what the third of the triple is...

[Ilaekae]

B'Spot...I love the way your brain works...

[Ilaekae]

Wen-Star, I definitely don't need someone to sharpen my knives. I do the cooking, all the heavy outdoor yard work, cut my own wood for my projects, and have over 600 knives/edged tools that range from dental knives to spears to Cold Steel Bowies and Tantos to massive machetes, all of which I sharpen with diamond grinders, stones and files.

[Stacybean]

Zork
Dragonsphere
King's Quest
Myst

THe fact that me and my brothers had so few games we'd sit around playing demos of sierra games, Santa's secret castle, Calahan's crosstime Saloon, and mavis beacon's haunted house. And so many hours on the Tony Hawk demo disk that came with the PS1 and the Square SOFT demo disk

The fact that me and my brother still get our asses kicked in Mystic Ninja and Rocky and Pocky just as bad as when we were 5. The fact that I am worse at super mario world today than when I was 10.

Bringing a copy of Nintendo Power to kindergarten and drooling over screenshots of Secret of Mana with a friend. Trading Nintendo cards with that same friend (wish I still had those!!)

I remember my dad's Packard Bell. Awesome games like 3d dinosaur exploration (only enviro's were 3d, the dinosaurs were in 2d), Flying colors which was basically a stamp program of pretty pictures, god hours and hours, and Castle of the Winds (talk about a dungeon crawler).

When my mom's old macs in her first grade classroom were upgraded, she got cool games like Freddy Fish and Putt Putt's Balloonarama. Instead of the orange celled black background counting games she had before.

Coolpix. Anyone remember how fun Coolpix was in school?

These things don't make me feel old. They make me feel like I belong to a secret club. I was playing these awesome games when for most people the coolest thing was the Simpsons and then South park. So glad we couldn't afford cable(can you imagine cable is like a necessity these days?)

[Wen-Astar]

@Alesoun:
Usually they innoculate against Diphteria, Polio and Tetanus in one go. More modern, they replace Polio with Pertussis (whooping cough), which is the more active illness. In Germany, anyways.
I also think that a Polio vaccination keeps longer than a Tetanus one, and Tetanus is used to space the innoculations.

@Ilaekae:
Oh, so I was carrying owls to athens.
I only own ten knifes by now, and every one of them is sharpened to a far-thee-well. Dull knifes ware a PITA and dangerous as hell. After my husband tried to cut up an apple and failed temendously, he agreed.

[Ilaekae]

I love sitting and watching someone try to cut a big beefeater-type tomato with a knife that feels like it's been used to shave a concrete driveway smooth. Ever seen tomato juice drip from the ceiling?

[Angel Intheuk]

/\ Lol

[Rehab Bunny]

The fact that my knees click.
Or, when I have to google slang.

[Wooly ESS]

Wooly, I never used a slide rule. We were meant to use log tables, but I preferred doing it with pen and paper, and annoying my teacher by doing my long division to about 30 decimal places - he couldn't check it without doing it himself.

Log tables! I forgot the log tables!

[wiggum]

I was at a Halloween talking to a young lady who is actually too young to remember the Simpsons ever being a good show...That's depressing for more than one reason.