Things that make you feel really old

So what makes you feel old?

Remembering that I was the television remote and antenna!

Being happy to run a 5k in under 30 minutes.

As a kid where was no such thing as tv...The radio was the highest hi tech eqpt around.

The article also had me laughing, since some of my clothes are popular for 6th time.

I agree with all of those! And can add:

• The first transistor radio I had waslarger than my dressy beaded purse.
• I'm on Windows 8. I feel old every time I turn it on.
• When I bought my first computer, I had to take a mortgage out on my home. I can get MORE memory in a calculator for $10, now.
• Just about everything I have in my home is pretty much100 years old, if not older. And the newer stuff won't last 20 years, much less 100 years.
• Thefamily membersthat I am writing about either saw the Civil War, or were born during the Civil War. And I just missed some of them...
• When writing about the early years of my career, I have to answer the question: Why didn't you just call someone on your cell phone? Answer: because we didn't HAVE cells phones back then.
• When I could buy a small box of chocolates for $.25 that had 5 pieces of candy in it. Same size box, same brand, only 4 pieces is now $4.00, at least.
• Arthritis and heart medicines.

I'm sure I can think of about 10,000 other things, too...

A few years ago, I was substitute teaching in a sixth grade science class. I was explaining how sound travels better through solid substances than in the air. To do this, I told a Lone Ranger joke that involves Tonto holding his ear to the ground to hear hoofbeats. One of the kids then asked, "But Mr. L, WHO is the Lone Ranger?" I didn't think there was a kid in America who didn't know who the Lone Ranger was. Next thing you know, they won't remember Howdy Doody.

When owning a Walkman was cool technology and 8 track tapes players you installed into your own car.

Dialing a telephone and getting the time by dialing "Nervous"

Having your kids laugh at you when you tell them there was a time that Elton wasn't considered gay.

The change in usage of the word gay.

Fall out shelters and fallout drills in school.

Playing out in the streets till dark and having your parents yell to call you in.

Actually knowing who ABBA, and what the name stood for and no it was the play.

Seeing clothes I wore "back in the day" come back into fashion for the THIRD time!

Especially painful when you see your daughters in them.

We're having our 40th reunion this year, dear Barb... I do understand how you feel! EGADS! 40 years???

LOL! Yep. You're right!

Also: remembering what the first 2 numbers of your phone number really mean. 68#-####. The 68 stood for Murray Hill, and was MU. All the phone numbers USED to be listed as MU#-####, when I was a kid.

Now, with all these stupid digits, I'm lucky to be able to dial a darn phone.

I remember the first phone we had..6 party line..LOL

It is ok, Dowser, just think of the geologic time scale, that will put things in perspective really quickly..... Or maybe you don't want to go quite to that extreme...

LOL! That's why I look for fossils, everywhere I go. I find them to be comforting!

Grandma and Grandpa had a 4 party line, then a 2 party line, and then, finally, a private line. They were thrilled!

My in-laws had a 2 party line up until about 10 years ago-- but there was no one on their line with them. Theymade them upgrade to a single party line, but Dad went down to the office and told them, "I'm not paying for it. I'll pay for the 2 party line, but not the single party line. It's YOUR fault I have to pay extra." So they only charged him for a 2 party line.

Dad was an accountant. He could be tighter than the bark on a tree.

All the above! Especially the Encyclopedia Brittanica, that was our homework hotline! Flashing back to term papers, written by hand, researched by hours of work in the library and the home encyclopedias. I also remember buying my first computer, (paying as much as 3 laptops would cost now), and telling my husband that I did not need 40MB of hard drive space, because I would never, ever, use that much!!

Sure do, Dowser!

You MAY get a call this evening from The Hubs...

LOL! Just one of our usual sayings...

my first had 64K memory... LOL

a Radio Shack, TRS-80

Gosh, Gunny-- I have no idea how many transistors were in my first one! It was 1962, a Sony radio, and it had a flip up top!

Here's another one: Watching the Space Shuttle and remembering Sputnik! We even had a cat named Sputnik!

OH!! And being grateful for an electric typewriter, rather than a hand peck typewriter! I learned on a Royal, hand typewriter... EGAD.

Remember when you couldn't do anything with the star or ampersand buttons because they just weren't there? Check out the big black phone in this picture. Strangest thing is that the phone actually weighed almost as much as I did. That's me making the call and my sister holding down the button so that I wouldn't get that beep, beep sound. This was the time when my parents always dreaded getting a long distance call. It always meant that somebody had died.

I still have all of mine... I got a record player to play them a few years ago, and WHAT FUN!!!

I'm 3.5 years older than my husband 1/2 of the year and 4 years older 1/2 of the year... Almost 6 months to the day.

He's a great guy! I have a hard time keeping up with him!

I remember standing against the wall in high school and seeing a 30ish looking gal walk by and turning to my friend and saying "Who would want to be with someone THAT OLD!".

I remember well the shock of gas making it from about $0.50 gallon to the horrendous price of $1.

I thought I would never find anyone to get married to. When I did and that marriage cost me everything I had ever hoped for or aspired to in this life and literally sealed my doom, I wish I never had gotten married. Marriage in the modern USA is a death-trap for men. It should be outlawed or handled like the corporate legal transaction that it really is. Vows and adherence to same mean NOTHING to the newer generations starting with my own. Now marriage is not politically correct and it seems the entire USA can't operate without by-the-second consideration of the many, many rights and daily trials of homosexuals like everyone else is somehow not important anymore. Meanwhile, the abortion clinics are raising Cain with the USA. To me, this kind of bi-polar absurdity is not normal. If the USA is going totally homo...won't the abortion clinic go the way of the dial phone? To everyone else, this is apparently normal.

There was a time when men and women seemed to get along OK. Now men are hated and everything there is is about single women and children and how rotten and horrible the male gender is is the main focus. Meanwhile the older men at the Church think nothing has changed and it's all the same as it was 20-30 years ago. They can't figure out why a lot of guys have no jobs, no futures, and no life and given that why they don't think much of being harangued into going and doing "charity work" for all the single mothers with kids living in church paid condos, driving new cars they got from ?, and having broke guys not only work for free but also provide parts and gas to go andget them out of their own pocket. When a down-and-out guy pulls up in 20-30 year old vehicle and has to squeeze past a suburban or a sports sedan of the newest vintage and step over a plethora of toys, etc, for the kids of the "poor single Mother with Kids" living in a nice Condo...to get to what needs being fixes..usually plumbing or something else nasty...... it's obvious that they are just being used/abused by the system and the recipients. And THEN they wonder why the "younger" guys stop coming to church.....? Any man about 55 and younger in a modern Church is just a slave to the single-women-with-children and anyone with a house full of kids. The rich old guys running it get off on handing out all the collections and ordering every other man under them to go slave for free for the women. A lot of "younger" guys I know don't have anything to do with their religions any more...and the women in the churches just cannot figure out why anyone would not want to get involved. Go figure.

The pre-PC era actually worked. You put in the plug yourself or it would not play. The entire world did not revolve around PC's, the Internet, and cell phones...excuse me...PDAs.

At the crappy job I do on the side besides what I do the younger guys that show up are so mechanically illiterate that they have no clue how to operate any tool or any device except a PC and a PDA. Nearly total mechanical incompetence is now normal. They break industrial type equipment due to sheer ignorance and malfeasance and get traffic ticket and crash the service trucks and actually can't figure out why anyone would say anything to them about it. I thank the LORD that I do not have to interact with those guys as I can't imagine what to say to a herd of guys that don't know how to change a light bulb. A Lady older than me changes the toner cartridge in the copy machine while the guys stand around and watch her do it. I have come to find myself wondering if these guys can operate a flush toilet..or if their Mothers do that for them to. It should be put on the job applications.....

I'm now convinced that if we don't figure out how to make a fruit or vegetable "plug and play" so it can connect to the internet the newer generations will starve as even operating a microwave oven is beyond their comprehension and ability to perform. Yet they all get paid more than I do. Young, cheap labor trumps being older and wiser in the USA...and people wonder why the USA is in the pits.

When PC's first came out they operated at 2, 4, and the amazing 8 mHz. The entire huge hard drive was 32 megabites at the 16 mHz chip speed. The Internet only existed in the University computer labs and at the government levels.

You can't keep up with YOUR wife? My wife is 27 years younger than me!!!

So what makes you feel old?

Facebook. I refuse to budge from the days where your personal life was just that. Remember the days when you would look for a job in the classified section of the newspaper, send in a resume, get a phone call, attend an interview with your potential new boss, discuss pertinent qualifications, and get a job. Now, it is apparently all about "networking". Put your life on blast with facebook, twitter and linkedin, apply for a job through either an agency, headhunter, or human resource department (all of which SUCK), and be stifled by not having some on-line cache of personal information for some skeevy HR perv to rifle through .... because apparently, having someone who knows nothing about your skillset, or even youroccupation, comb through your personalhistory looking for things that have nothing to with your ability to be an effective employee, is somehow more important than being hired based on a face to face meeting between a potential employee and their potential boss.

I went to my first ever high school reunion last year. It was the 40th as well. It was pretty interesting and quite fun actually. I've kept up with my old miscreant weird friends over the decades but had lost touch with all the "straight" kids. It was a pleasure to reconnect.

The dissipation of athletic prowess is probably the main thing that makes me feel old. That and the general everyday pain.

Dialing up Arlene at the phone company to ask her to connect me to Miss Lurlene or somebody or the other. Gone.

Not having to dial the first three numbers of a local phone number. Gone.

Spending .50 at the Gas Station and getting gas, a pack of smokes and a Nehi Chocolate drink. Long gone.

Gas Stations. The lack thereof.

Being able to stand in the engine compartment to change points and plugs. Gapping points with a matchbook cover. I guess I still kind of do that. I run very old rigs. I hates me some new trucks and cars.

The Poleece Station being a phone booth on the highway. Gone. Now it's a fancy brick building and there is a LEO for every citizen.

Trying to find a dang pay phone. Where'd they go?

The erosion of colloquialism and white breading of American Society in general. I find I have to explain the way I talk to young folks constantly.

Not seeing packs of yard apes running the hills and hollers unchaperoned.

Political Correctness makes me feel old, and annoyed.

Just the acute slow grinding suffocation and rule of law that has made us a rigid society. Hell, when I was young, you could actually escape the cops by running on yer feet. The stupid shyte we did as kids would pull a felony charge these days.

And on and on.

I got my first "word processor" in about 1980 at work. It took up the ENTIRE DESK - the Pentagon's server is probably smaller!

Don't Fret! Mick Jagger is 70 as well!

Amen, Hal. Amen.

I've got one of those phones. Not only is it fun to dial, if you suffer a home invasion you can beat the fool out of the invader with it.

My Grand Folks had the older version. The one's that were more whimsical in design. The one I have came from my parental units.

These were what we used at the Grand's farm.

I I'm going to die, then that's way I would like it to happen.

I I'm going to die, then that's way I would like it to happen.

If you really have to go, that's the way to do it. I've dealt with younger oriental women before and they will kill you, in the most pleasant way possible, of course. Almost makes the heart attack worth it.

This was a high tech movie camera.

My granddad and I always tuned the engines by the sound, and not much else. My wife tells me I'm too old to crawl under the car to work. That makes me feel old.

I am also quite the Vidiot. I just get my daughter to do it. I stick with the stereo system and guitar amps.

US Citizen , first if all, I am a woman. I agree with you on a lot that you said. I always say than if a man get's married, he needs a woman like me. Why? Well, I take care of fixing things on my own. I have an income of my own. I am no jealous, and I don't feel like I have to keep tabs on a man. The one I'm with now, I'm not married to him; we get along absolutely great. We are not demanding of each other.

Now, I have been married 3 times. The first one lasted a little over 4 years, and for every day of those 4 years, I listened to him accusing me of cheating on him with his brothers, his father and the mailman along with every other man in the county. When we separated, I found out he was cheating, and had been doing so with the woman that gave birth to me, plus 2 or 3 others. My divorce attorney got mad because I wouldn't take alimony from him. I could and did work to support myself and didn't need his money.

The second one, I married in Las Vegas, that one lasted all of 10 days. On the 10th day, he beat the hell out of me, breaking a couple of ribs. He got a pistol stuck barrel to skin right between his eyes as I begged him to hit me again. He put his hands up and walked out, I flew back east that same day. He had some land in the mountains of West Virginia that I could have taken. Again, I didn't want it, I supported myself.

The third one lasted 3 months. He was a truck driver and I told him I knew he was going to be doing things on the road that I would not approve of. I just asked him not to bring anything home to me such as letters, diseases and all that. Well he didn't listen and brought it home to me anyhow. I got his keys, packed all his junk in his car and gave him his keys telling him to get out! He left and I haven't seen him since and don't care to.

So, you see, all women are not like the ones you've run into. And I know from experience that all men are not like the ones I've run into. There is good in both sexes out there, maybe you will find one.

Now, as far as what makes ME feel older than dirt is to have 2 young adults find out my age and ask me if I was a hippy. I tell them yes, and they want to hear the whole story. Hippies were not that far back, but, young people today sire are curious about it.

I had face book for awhile, and got rid of it. There was way too much spam coming into my mail and I didn't like that, so I closed it. Tried twitter one time, just wrote in "I just farted, ain''t that grand? That was it. I have a cell phone, but leave it at home most of the time, cause I don't like people keeping up with me all the time.

I thank you for your reply.

I have no respect for those males who mistreat Ladies. I do not understand how any man can treat his mate, his wife, and his lover as anything less than the best thing in his life.

For a Lady to choose to let a man be the Father of her child is the most previous gift that she could possibly share, and to treat her as anything less than the amazing Lady that she is is definately a major sin at the level of the Ten Commandment's.

I know how badly US females have been treated and have previously written prolifically in advocation for female recognition and rights. At this point there seem to be plenty of women covering that subject matter so I'm writing counter-point more often to let the "other side" get heard too. When you feel this way and advocate for the other gender it's easy to get bitter when it all blows up in your face and you suffer major life damages.

Wrong doing is definately an equal opportunity activity and it works just as well for one gender as it does the other. I wish it wasn't so, but it is.

If I can ever run into a non-married Lady and she becomes my mate that will be the happiest moment of my life. Assuming we can both screw up the courage to let down our defenses so things can have a chance to work.....

Remember FM converters? Cars didn't used to come with FM on the radio. To get FM you had to install a converter and set one of your buttons to tune to the converter output frequency. Remember having to put those circular magnets around your speaker wires because of induced current from the old style generators?

Knowing that I trained in, and repaired electronic equipment that operated on VACUUM TUBES!

Knowing how to use a slide rule. (under glass now)

I'm 53.... are you telling me that I only have three good years left at this speed?

The Trash-80s.

Don't fret. The computer that landed on the moon only had 8K memory!

Duck and cover drills.....!

In that case BF.... it's not the years for them, it's the miles!

Gosh, I'm feeling rather young now after reading all these posts.

What makes me feel old? Work. I used to be one of the young turks . . . now I'm the grey beard. These little punks want me to MENTOR them. Gad, just shoot me.

A slide rule, protractor and a compass...LOL...Vacuum tubes as well...

LOL GeeGee, no shooting allowed...

I am now the same age as MY mentor when she hired me right out of high school. I thought she was so old at the time but, dang, she knew her stuff and I wanted to learn.

However, she was much more patient than I. All I want to do is smack these little entitled do nothings. I'll mentor them alright -- with my pointy shoe up their butts.

Goes down the tubes from there Fly. Now, I'm looking back on 53 with nostalgia.

GeeGee, your not very clear on how you feel about those ''little entitled do nothings''...Could you more specific? ROTFL

Sorry, I'll try to be more clear in the future.

Whenever I've worked advanced math classes, I would tell the students that the last math class I had was in 1965 and I passed with a D-. I also told them that, of course, all calculations were done on paper, including deriving square roots. Invariably, one of them would ask why we weren't able to use calculators. My response, "Because they hadn't been invented yet" (They had but were not available for high school students. Who had a spare couple of hundred dollars available?).

When someone in their 30's wants to hear about being a hippy! When I wish my brother a happy birthday, he's 45 and I'm old enough to be his mother! When I realize that I have nieces with teenage kids. When I look in the mirror and see more wrinkles that a Shar Pei. Need more?

I remember paying 20 cents a gallon for gas in Fort Worth Texas during a gas price war. Happened quite often caused by more gas than buyers.

I'm still in my blissful little world of being pretty certain I am still (and always will be) 29.

No one has told my osteoarthritis this fact, all the creaky achy joints from playing too many sports. No one has mentioned that I am only 29 (still and forevermore) to my little white hairs that seem to be marching in like little soldiers.

And I was not ever very strong in math, so let's seeee nowww....hmmmm.... 2013 minus 1966...yes, 29's close enough, I think!

Then one day, a bright, sweet new face appears in my Kindergarten class. "Why does she look and act so familiar?" I'm thinking to myself. She says, "My daddy can't wait til Open House to see you! He said to tell you hi and you were his favorite teacher ever!!!!!"

It all came back to me. Little spunky Noah was in my Enrichment/Gifted class that I taught at that time. 16 years ago. Because 29 minus 16= um....uh.....oh oh....something is not adding up right here. And as I looked into the face of this beautiful little one, I saw Noah, young, a little mischieveous (the GOOD kind, the kind that lets you know that kid is a thinker, a doer, someone who has big ideas and lots of questions about his world) in the face of his beautiful little girl.

That made me feel old! But happy-old!