Wanna Feel Old? Read This!

Laurel

Kitty Mama
Joined
Aug 27, 1999
Posts
20,696
From
http://www.beloit.edu/~pubaff/releases/Mindset-List-2004.html

Every year, Beloit College puts out a list of some things that differentiate the incoming freshmen from their teachers. Here's a peek at their world:

1. Most students entering college this fall in the class of 2004, were born in 1982.
2. Grace Kelly, Elvis Presley, Karen Carpenter, and the E.R.A. have always been dead.
3. Kurt Cobain’s death was the “day the music died.”
4. Somebody named George Bush has been on every national ticket, except one, since they were born.
5. The Kennedy tragedy was a plane crash, not an assassination.
6. Huckleberry Finn has always been a “banned book.”
7. A “45” is a gun, not a record with a large hole in the center.
8. They have no clue what the Beach Boys were talking about when they sang about a 409, and the Little Deuce Coupe.
9. They have probably never lost anything in shag carpeting.
10. MASH and The Muppet Show have always been in re-runs.
11. Punk Rock is an activist movement, not a musical form.
12. They have always bought telephones, rather than rent them from AT&T.
13. The year they were born, AIDS was found to have killed 164 people; finding a cure for the new disease was designated a “top priority” for government-sponsored research.
14. We have always been able to reproduce DNA in the laboratory.
15. Wars begin and end quickly; peace-keeping missions go on forever.
16. There have always been ATM machines.
17. The President has always addressed the nation on the radio on Saturday.
18. We have always been able to receive television signals by direct broadcast satellite.
19. Cities have always been trying to ban the possession and sale of handguns.
20. Watergate is as relevant to their lives as the Teapot Dome scandal.
21. They have no idea that a “presidential scandal” once meant nothing more than Ronald Reagan taking President Carter’s briefing book in “Debategate.”
22. They have never referred to Russia and China as “the Reds.”
23. Toyotas and Hondas have always been made in the United States.
24. There has always been a national holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.
25. Three Mile Island is ancient history, and nuclear accidents happen in other countries.
26. Around-the-clock coverage of congress, public affairs, weather reports, and rock videos have always been available on cable.
27. Senator Phil Gramm has always been a Republican.
28. Women sailors have always been stationed on U.S. Navy ships.
29. The year they were born, the New York Times announced that the “boom in video games,” a fad, had come to an end.
30. Congress has been questioning computer intrusion into individuals’ personal lives since they were born.
31. Bear Bryant has never coached at Alabama.
32. They have always been able to afford Calvin Klein.
33. Coors Beer has always been sold east of the Mississippi, eliminating the need for Burt Reynolds to outrun the authorities in the Smokey and the Bandit films.
34. They were born the same year that Ebony and Ivory lived in perfect harmony.
35. The year they were born, Dustin Hoffman wore a dress and Julie Andrews wore a tuxedo.
36. Elton John has only been heard on easy listening stations.
37. Woodstock is a bird or a reunion, not a cultural touchstone.
38. They have never heard a phone “ring.”
39. They never dressed up for a plane flight.
40. Hurricanes have always had men’s and women’s names.
41. Lawn darts have always been illegal.
42. “Coming out” parties celebrate more than debutantes.
43. They only know Madonna singing American Pie.
44. They neither know who Billy Joe was, nor wondered what he was doing on the Talahatchee Bridge.
45. They never thought of Jane Fonda as “Hanoi Jane,” nor associated her with any revolution other than the “Fitness Revolution” videotape they may have found in the attic.
46. The Osmonds are talk show hosts.
47. They have never used a bottle of “White Out.”
48. If they vaguely remember the night the Berlin Wall fell, they are probably not sure why it was up in the first place.
49. “Spam” and “cookies” are not necessarily foods.
50. They feel more danger from having sex and being in school, than from possible nuclear war.
 
I'm off to pick grey hairs out of my pubes now...

Damn you, Laurel.

#6 I don't get, #10 is a crying shame, and what the fuck are they using for white out???

[Edited by DarlingBri on 03-31-2001 at 04:00 AM]
 
Re: I'm off to pick grey hairs out of my pubes now...

DarlingBri said:
Damn you, Laurel.

#6 I don't get, #10 is a crying shame, and what the fuck are they using for white out???

[Edited by DarlingBri on 03-31-2001 at 04:00 AM]

Unfortunatly for #6 in the US they have banned the book from the school, all the way up to high school. Sometimes it is amazing that we are the land of the free.
 
I don't understand...

Are you trying to tell me that *every school board* in America has banned Huck Finn until HS?
 
Or a car crash? <Glub, Glub>

Laurel said:
5. The Kennedy tragedy was a plane crash, not an assassination.

This always reminds me of the moment in "When Harry Met Sally" when Billy Crystal brings a younger girlfriend to a party and mentions how traumatic it was for everyone when Kennedy was shot and she looks at him in all seriousness and says,

"Ted Kennedy was shot?"
 
Re: I don't understand...

DarlingBri said:
Are you trying to tell me that *every school board* in America has banned Huck Finn until HS?

From what I've been told it's a pretty high percentage. One of the big reasons is that it uses the "N" word to refer to blacks as well as some other things.
 
I am 23, so I am "Generation Y" and while most of those things apply to people my age, my parents were fucked up hippies so I know all the words to American Pie and was outraged when Madonna fucked up the song, I have a collection of 45's (records, not guns), I have Beatles memorabilia all over my house (and not because it is fashionable, but because I love the music).

I feel privelidged though about the banned books thing. I had a private tutor for my last year of form school (high school for you Yanks). He was very strange and brought a stack of books for me to read, including Huck Finn, Catcher In The Rye, several books by Allen Ginsburg and Anais Nin, and even Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses which was a HUGE controversy that year. So that made me the highly individualistic fucked up individual that i am today (thank you Mr. Chaubert!)

As for Shag Carpets, I have not lost anything in shag carpet, but when I was ten, I had braces and was laying on the floor one day with my friends, laughing hysterically and I rolled over to hide my face and SNAG! I got my braces caught on the shag carpet. I was stuck there. Of course my friends got a HUGE laugh out of this, and left me there for almost an hour, writhing like a beached carcas. Finally my mum came in and got scizzors to pry me off the carpet.

Picture that.

S
 
Aahhh.... the memories...

i remember bring back a suitcase load of Coors beer from my friends when i visited my sister who was going to college in Colorado (i was 18 at the time....i could drink, vote, and get drafted)




...didn't understand why they wanted it (other then the fact that you couldn't get it back east) still don't...
Bud is beer...... Coors is.........Bud lite?
 
OMG

I read # 6 in 9th grade.

I own Blonde on a #7

I still use # 47

#49, i like chocolate chip the best....(cookies not spam)

And im only 26. Now I feel incredibly old
 
I am 42 so I feel like everyone's grandma. The book debate has been going on for years in the US. As to the white out question, just about everyone I know uses a computer to write papers, essays, letters, etc. I still use white out at work where I don't have much computer access, but then I am the old lady of the board, I think. Good list, though, my son's friends will love it.
 
You know what's sad....

None of their icons sing or write about peace or hope for the future or revolution or free love. They just sing/write about drive by shootings and bleak techno-driven futures and cynical, short term relationships. At least Huck Finn exudes an innocence and sense of adventure which is denied in the literature deemed suitable for today's reading lists.

[Edited by CRaZy on 03-31-2001 at 06:42 AM]
 
teresafannin said:
I am 42 so I feel like everyone's grandma.
Nope, you're not the old lady of the board. I'm 43, but I'm no one's grandma!
 
LOL at the Harry met Sally scene... I loved that!

I first started noticing my age when our college babysitters brought up how cool it was that U2 "finally" won a Grammy. Wha--?? They also think REM only became big after the Andy Kaufman movie.

The other moment I felt old was visiting the kindergarten where my child is going next year and hearing how they practice safety drills in case of in-school violence. My biggest worry in kindergarten was getting that cute George to kiss me under the slide.
 
coralrose said:

The other moment I felt old was visiting the kindergarten where my child is going next year and hearing how they practice safety drills in case of in-school violence.
We did "duck and cover" drills back in the 60's when somehow they thought putting your head down and your back up along an inside hallway would protect you from a nuclear bomb should Russia drop one on us.
 
Ever try doing a "duck and cover" drill on the playground with just a sweater or coat to protect you? I think I've still got asphalt in my elbows.

I thought it was stupid then, and I know it is stupid now.

However, I can't recall anyone ever bringing a firearm to school when I was young, and I remember Huckleberry Finn as required reading. I must be very, very old.
 
Re: I'm off to pick grey hairs out of my pubes now...

DarlingBri said:
Damn you, Laurel.

#6 I don't get, #10 is a crying shame, and what the fuck are they using for white out???

[Edited by DarlingBri on 03-31-2001 at 04:00 AM]

Everone now uses a bottle of Delete Button...

This is a great thread...

I like that post by Sateem, a teacher with Anais Nin AND Catcher in the Rye? Hussa huzza!...

Huck Finn...Anybody worried about the word Nigger has never been to jail or read the book, it's all about the generic morals of so-called good people...

Huck Fin
 
I can remember being amazed when I stumped a roomful of eighteen-year-olds with the following trivia question:

What group did Sting perform with before going solo?

I asked that question about five years ago.

I explained my amazement by telling them that one day they would themselves stump a roomful of kids by asking them who Bono played with before his solo act.
VG
 
Cheyenne said:
coralrose said:

The other moment I felt old was visiting the kindergarten where my child is going next year and hearing how they practice safety drills in case of in-school violence.
We did "duck and cover" drills back in the 60's when somehow they thought putting your head down and your back up along an inside hallway would protect you from a nuclear bomb should Russia drop one on us.

In the spirit of the thread, I had rented a copy of "The Day After", that early 80's 'what if there really was a nuclear war' piece, a few weeks back and there's this scene in it where the paniced townfolks are all lining up at the phone booths to make phone calls.

My slightly younger wife looks over at me and I swear, completely serious, she says 'what idiots, why don't they just use their cell phones???'

Okay, so I didn't marry her for her brains! ;)


[Edited by Cync on 03-31-2001 at 11:06 AM]
 
Daaahhh... Ren, what's a Sting?

vgrey said:
I can remember being amazed when I stumped a roomful of eighteen-year-olds with the following trivia question:

What group did Sting perform with before going solo?

Was this in some kind of "special ed" class for slow kids? The one with the really big pencils, and the giant buckets of paste?

Shit, I'm no discophile, but I knew Eric Clapton came out of Cream (no pun intended), that John Lennon fronted the Beatles, and that Jimmy Page, Clapton and even Jeff Beck had all been in the Yardbirds.

Have they cleaned the lead paint and asbestos out of your school yet? :)
 
Sting=the Police

Oh my, I am feeling old also...growing up we watched Black & white tv, I think until I was almost 7 or 8 yrs old. Our highlight was to come home from school and watch Annette and gang on the Mickey Mouse Club...when we got older it was Dark Shadows and the soapy Search for Tomorrow.
The Brooks and the Fosters were on The Young & The Restless...
Reva was in love with Billy...
Alan Spaulding was beginning his evil streak...
 
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