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Nostalgia for 40 year olds


Marylander

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http://www.beloit.edu/mindset/previouslists/

 

Check the list on here. These are generalist lists.  The one 5-10 years ago were more interesting to me. 

 

The Mindset List for the Class of 2017

For this generation of entering college students, born in 1995, Dean Martin, Mickey Mantle, and Jerry Garcia have always been dead.

1. Eminem and LL Cool J could show up at parents’ weekend.
2. They are the sharing generation, having shown tendencies to share everything, including possessions, no matter how personal.
3. GM means food that is Genetically Modified.
4. As they started to crawl, so did the news across the bottom of the television screen.
5. “Dude” has never had a negative tone.
6. As their parents held them as infants, they may have wondered whether it was the baby or Windows 95 that had them more excited.
7. As kids they may well have seen Chicken Run but probably never got chicken pox.
8. Having a chat has seldom involved talking.
9. Gaga has never been baby talk.
10. They could always get rid of their outdated toys on eBay.
11. They have known only two presidents.
12. Their TV screens keep getting smaller as their parents’ screens grow ever larger.
13. PayPal has replaced a pen pal as a best friend on line.
14. Rites of passage have more to do with having their own cell phone and Skype accounts than with getting a driver’s license and car.
15. The U.S. has always been trying to figure out which side to back in Middle East conflicts.
16. A tablet is no longer something you take in the morning.
17. Threatening to shut down the government during Federal budget negotiations has always been an anticipated tactic.
18. Growing up with the family dog, one of them has worn an electronic collar, while the other has toted an electronic lifeline.
19. Plasma has never been just a bodily fluid.
20. The Pentagon and Congress have always been shocked, absolutely shocked, by reports of sexual harassment and assault in the military.
21. Spray paint has never been legally sold in Chicago.
22. Captain Janeway has always taken the USS Voyager where no woman or man has ever gone before.
23. While they've grown up with a World Trade Organization, they have never known an Interstate Commerce Commission.
24. Courts have always been ordering computer network wiretaps.
25. Planes have never landed at Stapleton Airport in Denver.
26. Jurassic Park has always had rides and snack bars, not free-range triceratops and velociraptors.
27. Thanks to Megan's Law and Amber Alerts, parents have always had community support in keeping children safe.
28. With GPS, they have never needed directions to get someplace, just an address.
29. Java has never been just a cup of coffee.
30. Americans and Russians have always cooperated better in orbit than on earth.
31. Olympic fever has always erupted every two years.
32. Their parents have always bemoaned the passing of precocious little Calvin and sarcastic stuffy Hobbes.
33. In their first 18 years, they have watched the rise and fall of Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez.
34. Yahoo has always been looking over its shoulder for the rise of "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”
35. Congress has always been burdened by the requirement that they comply with the anti-discrimination and safety laws they passed for everybody else to follow.
36. The U.S. has always imposed economic sanctions against Iran.
37. The Celestine Prophecy has always been bringing forth a new age of spiritual insights.
38. Smokers in California have always been searching for their special areas, which have been harder to find each year.
39. They aren’t surprised to learn that the position of Top Spook at the CIA is an equal opportunity post. 
40. They have never attended a concert in a smoke-filled arena.
41. As they slept safely in their cribs, the Oklahoma City bomber and the Unabomber were doing their deadly work.
42. There has never been a national maximum speed on U.S. highways.
43. Don Shula has always been a fine steak house.
44. Their favorite feature films have always been largely, if not totally, computer generated.
45. They have never really needed to go to their friend’s house so they could study together.
46. They have never seen the Bruins at Boston Garden, the Trailblazers at Memorial Coliseum, the Supersonics in Key Arena, or the Canucks at the Pacific Coliseum.
47. Dayton, Ohio, has always been critical to international peace accords.
48. Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation in the cinematic universe.
49. They may have been introduced to video games with a new Sony PlayStation left in their cribs by their moms.
50. A Wiki has always been a cooperative web application rather than a shuttle bus in Hawaii.
51. The Canadian Football League Stallions have always sung Alouette in Montreal after bidding adieu to Baltimore.
52. They have always been able to plug into USB ports
53. Olestra has always had consumers worried about side effects.
54. Washington, D.C., tour buses have never been able to drive in front of the White House.
55. Being selected by Oprah’s Book Club has always read “success.”
56. There has never been a Barings Bank in England.
57. Their parents’ car CD player is soooooo ancient and embarrassing.
58. New York’s Times Square has always had a splash of the Magic Kingdom in it.
59. Bill Maher has always been politically incorrect.
60. They have always known that there are “five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes" in a year.


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Sticking S&H green stamps in the book

I wouldn't go to a gas station unless it gave out S&H green stamps. That's how I got my first tool box. And I got my first set of wrenches at JCPenney in their auto and hardware store. Still have a few I think. That was around 1970.

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Sticking S&H green stamps in the book

 

We bought our Coleman camp stove and lanterns with those!  And they still worked when we were camping in Cub Scouts several years ago.

 

 

My mom had a rotary dial phone until just a few years ago when the phone company told her she had to change to touch tone.

 

My son's babysitter had one.  I was there to pick him up one day (he will turn 22 this year) and another mom and daughter (about 2 years older than my son) were there.  The mom asked her daughter to call their house and tell their dad they would be home at such-and-such time.  She takes the phone off the hook then says "I don't know how to work this"! 

 

VHS/Beta wars

 

Thought about this several years ago when I bought a PS3 over an XBox  I knew Sony was not going to lose this time and started with the Blu-Ray format! 

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Heck, I was 48 when he was born!!

 

Muscle cars for sure.  We all had them. I used to take my older brother's cars out before I even got my license.

45's,  78's, and 33's! 

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I grew up on a farm and we had a "party line" with our neighbor. You never knew who was listening in.

 

Getting milk in a glass bottle.

 

A girl in her twenties where I work was given a check due to a payroll correction. She said, " What do I do with this?" She was never given a check to cash before.

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Remember when we didn't have graphical user interfaces on computers and operating any computer meant dealing with a textual prompt such as "C:\"?

My parents bought us an apple ][ when they first came out, so I learned to run a computer using BASIC. I still remember a lot of the prompts, like b: run, b: list, b: cat, etc, and also learning how to program in BASIC... If/then commands, etc... Man, how primitive all that seems now.

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It's funny because I'm 19 and none of this makes sense to me, but I do remember gas as low as $0.83

 

I remember working at a Standard Oil station when gas was $0.65 for a 1/2 gallon. Their pumps wouldn't read anytrhing over $1.00 gallon.

And who remembers going on an airplane and there would be that sign on one row of seats, usually about two thirds of the way back, with no smoking ahead of the seats and smoking allowed behind it?

That's one way we found pressurization leaks. Get a smoker in the plane while pressurized and blow smoke in the area of the suppected leak. We'd be able to see the smoke on the outside.

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I remember all the neighbors sitting on their front porch and talking to other neighbors when they strolled past. Nowadays everyone hides out int their back yards on the deck or patio.

Or worse yet, they move into these huge houses, buy their kids these massive swing sets, and the kids sit inside all day playing video games.

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Here's another thing I thought of today -- there was a cereal brand that had a slogan, "can you pinch more than an inch?". I think it was Special K. And the gist was if you can pinch more than an inch of belly fat you were getting unfit and should eat Special K to loose some weight. I bet 99.5% of todays consumers can pinch more than an inch...

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I'm not in the 40something age bracket, so a lot of this stuff, I was already married by the time you "kids" were discovering things.

Gas was 25c a gallon

Milk came from the milkman in bottles, and in the winter the cream would float to the top and freeze. We'd pop the cap off and eat the cream with a spoon. What a treat.

Only cost a dime or quarter for a movie

We had trolleys that ran on rails and wires in our town, later replaced with "trackless" trolleys and then busses.

We walked to school. Never had a school bus.

TV was black and white and I can still remember seeing my first color tv

There was no cable. We had rabbit ears on top of the tv and a huge antenna on top of the house later on

I wore my brother's hand me down clothes

There were no McDonalds or Burger Kings or fast food places

We went to church every Sunday and Holy Day

Only MEN went into pool halls

If you got a job in a steel mill or a coal mine you were set for life

Roller skates attached to your shoes with a key

Sleds had metal rails and we actually went outside and went sled riding!

There weren't ever snow days for school

We had sock hops and brought our own 45's to school to play on the record player

When 8 tracks came out........that was a BIG DEAL!

We had A.M. and F.M. on our radios (if we were lucky)

You were rich if your car had air conditioning

We bought our meat and groceries from the local corner store and the owner was a butcher who cut the meat in the back of the store.

I even remember the ice man coming with blocks of ice on the back of the wagon.

 

Sometimes I think I had it better than it is today.  We weren't consumed with what we had, but family, faith, and becoming a good citizen was most important. 

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I looks like Rich and I are about the same age. When I started driving gas was 24.9

 

The only thing I would add to his list is that radio in the car which might have FM didn't work on DC.

They had vibrators to make AC to power make the the radio work AND they the radio had tubes in them.

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I looks like Rich and I are about the same age. When I started driving gas was 24.9

 

The only thing I would add to his list is that radio in the car which might have FM didn't work on DC.

They had vibrators to make AC to power make the the radio work AND they the radio had tubes in them.

And we put the windows down with cranks not buttons! lol

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