Things that make you feel old

It more of a unique thing definitely not mainstream yet. The coach said he started it several years back because it was one of the first varsity teams being fielded at the school (which opened in 2008 I believe) and the players needed all the practice they could get. Doing a Midnight Madness allows a team to effectively get two practices in one day. The tradition caught on and it is a cool team bonding thing.

 

That is pretty cool, wonder if it will catch on at any colleges.

 

My 13-year old niece told me she likes oldies music. I asked her which artists.
"You know, like Whitney Houston."
Fuuuuuuck.

 

I got the email blast from the soccer league listing all the coaches and their email addresses. I'm back in it with my 5-year-old son. Among all the other coaches, there's only one name I recognize -- it was a kid I coached when he was 5 years old on my oldest son's team.

 

Considering most of her best stuff is almost 30 years old, that's not unreasonable. But yes, that makes me cringe.

 

In a related vein, doing the math and remembering that the 80s -- and soon to be the 90s -- were 30 years ago.

 

I remember watching Bugs Bunny as a kid, the one where Yosemite Sam is dressed up like a Confederate general. Bugs says "the Civil War ended almost NINETY years ago."

I was thinking, "damn, this cartoon is old."

 

My youngest niece is 8. I was 8 when some of the Beatles biggest hits came out.

She told me the other day that she liked "Yellow Submarine."

"Yellow Submarine" is as old to her as World War I was for me.

 

On a sort of related note, when the movie Yellow Submarine was re-released and made the rounds in theaters a few years ago, I took my kids to see it and told them it was a history lesson to show them what the psychedelic '60s were about.

 

• "The Lost Boys" turns 40 this year.

• Most of my friends around my age have grandchildren.

• Variations of this conversation from a day of substitute teaching:

Me: (noticing two kids with Ramones and Clash throwback t-shirts) I saw both of those bands when I was in college.
Kid 1: They were real bands?
Me: Yes. And I am old enough to remember when all of the Ramones were alive. Be gentle.
Kid 2: They're dead? Like the Beatles are all dead?
Me: ::sigh::

 

When I was a kid, even though I knew my grandparents had lived through WWI, and my grandfather had even been in the army, it just seemed like some mythological legendary time before history, when the whole world was in fuzzy black and white. It never really sank in to me what a big deal it was for them the first time they saw a car or an airplane.

They were all born in the early to mid 1890s, so they were about 10-12 when news of the first airplane flight came out, and 20 before airplanes became fairly routine sights. But they all lived to see Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

It was easier to believe my parents had been around in WWII, because there were pictures from those years, and while they looked different, they were still recognizably the same people.

 

Next you'll be asking them to turn the music down, too.
Then turning up for dinner at 5 p.m. sharp.
It's all downhill from here!