I'm so old that......

horseless carriage said:
I am so old that I can remember when most men wouldn't be seen without a collar and tie, even at sporting events.
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I can remember my dad going to work in a suit and coming home, going upstairs and change from a suit to a sweater and collar shirt for dinner, except in the summer, he wouldn't wear a sweater. Dad always had to get his tie off while going up the steps. As he went by me on the way to the stairs, he would pat me on the head and say "How was your day?" I always said the same thing. "OK." He never dressed like these men are to go to a baseball game.
 

C50 said:
My parents never once took me out to eat but I remember my grandfather taking me to a Woolworths once. They buttered and toasted the hot dog bun which was something my mom never did at home. Then I also got a Strawberry shortcake, I may have cried tears of joy because it was the most incredible thing I had ever tasted. I was probably around five but have never forgotten that.
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love it!
 

we never went anywhere except maybe at Christmas when we took the train to Penn Station and went to the Radio City Music hall for the show and the movie. I can remember every movie.
Life was different back then and I don't know if it was good or bad. It just was and we all survived.
I sometimes wonder why we look so deeply at the past as though we suffered. We didn't it was just a different time.
Here we are talking about it with fond memories for some and nightmares for others. yet we are here talking about it.
All I can do is count my blessings.
rbtvgo
 
Pappy said:
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Some time ago, we were talking with some friends at some function or other, and the subject was the long term memory. A question was posed: "Name the kid you sat next to when you started school." "Joseph Maher," I replied without a second thought even though Joseph hadn't crossed my mind in well over seventy years.

"How did you remember that?" I was asked. Easy really, I set him up. Joseph was never the brightest blade in the box, every question posed, Joseph would slyly glance at my answer, then stick his pencil in his mouth as though pondering, or working out the answer, then write down what he had seen of my response.

Enough, Joseph fell for the trap. I can't remember the actual question but let's just say that we were doing the five times table. The question: "What is five times five? I wrote five times six, Joseph wrote, five times six. I put the answer as twenty-five, so did Joseph. We all wrote in pencil back then, when Joseph was distracted I deleted the six and replaced it with five.

The teacher is walking around the class looking at everyone's answer. "Joseph Maher, stand up." He did. "Tell me, Joseph Maher," how did you get your answer?" "Miss?" "How did you get your answer/" "Miss?" "Twenty-five is correct." Joseph looked relieved. "What is five times six, Joseph Maher?" When you were in $hit street in this teacher's class your name was called out in full. Poor Joseph, he looked perplexed, he had the right answer but the realisation that he had copied the question from me and yet I wasn't in the proverbial, was lost on him. He was sent out of the classroom. I wonder what became of him? Probably went into politics.
 
horseless carriage said:
I am so old that I can remember when most men wouldn't be seen without a collar and tie, even at sporting events.
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Yep. Same with hats in the 50's. You could go across the street in your bathrobe, but you better be wearing a hat!
BTW, nice car in photo. What is it? Remember the song from 'All in the Family' tv? One line was "gee, our old LaSalle ran great". I can remember our black LaSalle. It didn't run great. Dad had to sell it because it used more oil than gas. But it was like travelling in a tank.
 
911 said:
…..I can remember watching TV using an outside antenna with a rotor on it.
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You were lucky. We only had one TV channel so we didn't have to rotate the antenna. The TV station came on at about 3PM showing some entertainment/news/documentary programming that ran to about 10 PM. Then the test pattern came on for 30 minutes followed by the Star-Spangled-Banner as jets were shown flying over DC monuments and then the station signed off. After sign-off, we would watch 'snow' for 10-15 minutes just to make sure nothing else was coming on, only then did we turn the TV off.
 
I remember having to visit the only other kid owning a TV in the Upper West Side of NYC. Once a week all the kids on the Upper West Side would visit that only kid with the TV on Monday nights at 8 PM to watch "Uncle Milty," do his comedy routine for half an hour. He was Milton Berle, of course. The kid's TV set was 8 inches of course. That was about in 1948. I am 88 now. Very few folks live to 88 these days.
 
Mitch86 said:
I remember having to visit the only other kid owning a TV in the Upper West Side of NYC. Once a week all the kids on the Upper West Side would visit that only kid with the TV on Monday nights at 8 PM to watch "Uncle Milty," do his comedy routine for half an hour. He was Milton Berle, of course. The kid's TV set was 8 inches of course. That was about in 1948. I am 88 now. Very few folks live to 88 these days.
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Wow. That must have been one of the first stations on the air. I was only 5 then. I don't think we got a tv until I was around 8 or 10. We used to gather around the radio & listen to "the Shadow", Jack Benny, Grace & Allen, & some cowboy shows (Roy Rodgers, Gene Autry, Tom Mix & my fav, Lash LaRue.)
 
The NBC Peacock , Saturday morning kids shows. Saturday night was Have Gun will Travel and Sea Hunt.
When you were fortunate to get color the only shows watched, according to TV Guide were those in color. Wonderful World of Disney, Bonanza etc.
Now we have hundreds of channels..................................and nothing to watch. Crazy world
rbtvgo
 
OK Boomer, face it, you’re now a senior
Christopher Bantick



Being a blue-blood Boomer, I am now a card-carrying senior. I hardly needed reminding. It’s not the Commonwealth Health Care Card or the seniors’ cubby house emails that hit the inbox with all kinds of discounts, it’s something more subtle.

When international students offer you a seat on a tram it comes home to you. Forget vanity creep, you’re regarded as, well, old. Maybe it’s the grey hair? Perhaps it’s the “S” written in felt tip on the reverse of my renewed myki card by a helpful, pitying Metro Trains employee, or is it being asked from theatres to cinemas, “any concessions”?

“OK Boomer” is a popular phrase among Generation Z to dismiss or mock the baby boomer generation.
“OK Boomer” is a popular phrase among Generation Z to dismiss or mock the baby boomer generation.CREDIT:ISTOCK

We have a problem with age in our society. There’s nothing new in that. The problem though lies with older people themselves; seniors, checking out early. Mind you there are plenty of incentives available. Insurance deals for the over 50s, retirement villages or communities that are pitched promising freedom. Get in early and sign up, ensure your place in God’s waiting room.

Seniors have a choice, behave to type or defy perceptions of age. It’s far easier to give in to the allure of that cruise to endsville or the hope of landing upon the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the last tango in, if not Paris, Noosa than it is to keep squaring up to life ... within reason. Fifty is not the new 30 and 60 is not the new 40. It may not be wise to take up skiing, jet or alpine, when you’re 75.

Nonetheless, there is a certain recklessness with some seniors. It usually ends badly. While the British rock band The Who may have sung, “Hope I die before I get old,” there is no reason to feel afraid of being old, or some sense of shame or embarrassment. So why do we as a society see seniors as defeated by years or dismissed as past it? We do not revere age, we fear it.

Seniors have a choice, behave to type or defy perceptions of age.
Seniors have a choice, behave to type or defy perceptions of age.CREDIT:ISTOCK

Michael Caine is 90 this year and still making movies. In a recent interview, he had this to say about his work: “I think if you retire, you’re sort of saying, ‘I’ve given up. I’m going to sit here and what am I going to do now? I’ll tell you what – I’m going to die’.”

Forget the cliches that you’re only as young as you feel. Or for that matter, whether we can “play by our own rules”. Haven’t we earned the right to say, “I don’t care, I love it?” Age is sneaky and insistent. “You can’t beat the clock” as Sergeant Murtaugh bemoans in Lethal Weapon 4.

One of the hardest pills for Boomers to swallow is that they are now old, and that it’s OK to be so. It’s cold comfort that poets remind us of what’s ahead. W.B Yeats observed:

“When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;”

Then there is Thomas Hardy, not one for jollity, who noted the ravages of age: “I look into my glass; And view my wasting skin.”

Not much to look forward to there without Botox.

Thankfully some seniors are remarkably active and effectively begin a second stage of life: volunteering and grandparenting, playing sport, you name it, and they’re in it. So, why does society still so often regard older people as well past their use-by date or resent them for their success, which is behind the envy of the “OK Boomer” comments one hears from time to time?

Older people may be categorised as avuncular and benign retirees, attending the matinee of life, but they contribute much to society.

Seniors have to decide how they want to be seen, notwithstanding reasonable health being maintained. They would do well to reflect on what the American poet Mary Oliver says:

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.”

It’s OK Boomer after all.
 
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