How to Know You're Old

I think Cracked might be reading this thread: https://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-1378-here-are-30-things-that-make-you-feel-ancient/


Number 11 totally happened to me not long ago.

porlock said:

… It's always a minor cut, but I have no clue.

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*Raises Hand*
Yep, me too! - Got one on my thumb, and still can't remember how it happened.

Chris P said:

I think Cracked might be reading this thread: https://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-1378-here-are-30-things-that-make-you-feel-ancient/


Number 11 totally happened to me not long ago.

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Number 20 brings back memories. Anyone remember pulling that choke out when your car engine was cold and pushing it back in when the car warmed up?

MaeZe said:

Number 20 brings back memories. Anyone remember pulling that choke out when your car engine was cold and pushing it back in when the car warmed up?

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I never figured out the choke on the car, only on chainsaws and lawnmowers, in which case I simply tried to start it, and if it didn't I'd flip the switch to whatever it wasn't and try again. I still don't know if it's supposed to be open or closed.

In the early 80s my dad wasn't convinced the automatic choke on the brand new car was working properly, and somehow rigged up a manual choke that only he could figure out. I'm glad we got rid of that car before I was old enough to drive.

Chris P said:

I never figured out the choke on the car, only on chainsaws and lawnmowers, in which case I simply tried to start it, and if it didn't I'd flip the switch to whatever it wasn't and try again. I still don't know if it's supposed to be open or closed.

In the early 80s my dad wasn't convinced the automatic choke on the brand new car was working properly, and somehow rigged up a manual choke that only he could figure out. I'm glad we got rid of that car before I was old enough to drive.

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I had to look it up. I was thinking pulling the knob out opened the carburetor but it turns out that closes the flap.

You close the choke to cut back air flow in the fuel mix when the engine is cold.

Told a young lady about how Iowa girls played six-on-six basketball when I was in high school.

If I hadn't shown her YouTube videos of it, I don't think she would've believed me.

Iowa boy myself, and I remember watching six-on-six. Didn't two of them from each team have to stay on one side of the court so the action at the hoop was actually four-on-four? I seem to remember four girls at the half-court line at all times, no matter where the ball was.

Three girls on each side, but otherwise you're totally correct.

Iowa had to change to traditional basketball, but there were plusses to six-on-six. You could put girls who didn't have much shooting ability on the guard court where they could contribute. Then you put your best shooters as forwards.

Emphasize the positive, minimize the negative.

You know you're old when:

Your doctor sends you for tests to prove that you are still alive.
He sends you again because the results came back inconclusive.
Jennifer Aniston takes you to bed and you just want to sleep.
You look in the mirror and there's no reflection.
The library finally catches up with you and you have to sell the house to pay the fines.
Your medicine cabinet falls off the wall because its so heavy with laxatives.
Your granddaughter is a police chief.
You have to suck your steak.
The only way you can get a good nights sleep is to take a sleeping bag to the bathroom.

All that to look forward to in another forty years...

... When you're out to dinner with friends, and Hubby starts making a crack about some "65 year-old woman," and then he glances at me, and I'm glaring at him like "Uh-huh, do go on, don't stop now!"

< True story - happened last night >

You know you're old when you need subtitles for all movies -- not just the foreign ones.

Auteur said:

You know you're old when you need subtitles for all movies -- not just the foreign ones.

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That's me.

I just posted some vintage sheet music up for sale on eBay because I'm moving and don't want to pack it all up just to unpack it and store at the new digs.

I remember learning to play piano on much of this...

(Memory stirred by watching preview concert for Ken Burns Country Music on PBS)

1949. No television station in Phoenix until 1950. Whole family sat in living room listening to Grand Ol Opry on Saturday nights. Radio was a 3-ft high Stromberg-Carlson.
Lefty Frizzell was a particular favorite.

Getting a color TV was a status symbol on my block when I was a kid. The neighbors got one first. Finally my dad bought us one. (Dads made those big financial decisions back then.) And it was in time to watch The Wizard of Oz in color on TV.

[MaeZe who isn't sure she didn't post this earlier in the thread ... more than once. ]

I've noticed my back just hurts, off and on now. And that just seems to be how it is.

My dad thought television was just a flash in the pan. He would not cough up the money to buy one until he came to pick up my siblings and me from a neighbor's house one Saturday morning. We were watching Tarzan. Dad was flabbergasted that something as educational as Tarzan was on television. He had been told that tv was making the country stupid. Then the neighbor kids told dad that the Kansas City Athletics were also on tv. That did it. We had a tv within the week. In time to see my Aunt on the Art Linkletter show.
Kansas City Athletics? How's that for Ooooold?

shakeysix said:

My dad thought television was just a flash in the pan. He would not cough up the money to buy one until he came to pick up my siblings and me from a neighbor's house one Saturday morning. We were watching Tarzan. Dad was flabbergasted that something as educational as Tarzan was on television. He had been told that tv was making the country stupid. Then the neighbor kids told dad that the Kansas City Athletics were also on tv. That did it. We had a tv within the week. In time to see my Aunt on the Art Linkletter show.
Kansas City Athletics? How's that for Ooooold?

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Many decades ago, as a high school kid, I had the chance to represent my school on a televised quiz show. The TV station that hosted the show had its studio in the deep basement of the building, with their radio station on the more lofty floors. The producer said that this was because the owner of the station considered television to be a passing fancy, a step child industry, and didn't deserve nice digs. The owner fancied himself an important man in our city, and maybe he was, but even as a fresh-faced kid, I could see that he had outlived his era. Funny, too, that his radio station was the one in town that broadcast things like Ru$h Limbaugh and other reactionary shows.

Today in the bus, some high school students stood up to accompany me to an empty chair. I haven't felt that old for a very long time.

sarahjones said:

Today in the bus, some high school students stood up to accompany me to an empty chair. I haven't felt that old for a very long time.

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My God, where do you live? I'd think I was on the wrong planet.

I'm so old.

You know you're old when a blind date asks if you're any good in bed, and your answer is, "I forgot." Not mine. It's a line from a movie.

When your toes don't quite make it to the open end of your waiting sock, despite rocking back and forth on the edge of the bed. .