Perspective – IOTW Report

Perspective

I just saw a meme the other day that had 15 numbered pictures of Al Bundy, from Married With Children, with different facial expressions. They asked, “which Al Bundy day are you having?”

In my mind that show is not that old, but I did the math and the debut show was 33 years ago.

Yikes! Where did the time go?

It got me thinking. I remember when the show came out it was compared to the Honeymooners, a show that had cult status when I was in college. It was “cool” to be into such an “old show.”

I was talking with Hippie Critic (who I met in college and was a big Honeymooners fan) and I hit him with some perspective. Married with Children is further back in our rear view mirror, from its debut date, than The Honeymooners was when we were in college.

Married With Children is 33 years old. The Honeymooners was only 25 years old at the time.

This was depressing. I hit him with another one.

I pointed out that anyone who was our current age on the day we were born was born in the 19th century.

I was even more depressed

That’s when Hippie dropped this tidbit-

John Tyler, our nation’s 10th president, has 2 grandsons… that are still alive.

I had heard this before, around 8 years ago. I figured this bit of trivia wasn’t holding up any longer, so I looked it up.

It’s still true. They are still alive.

Somehow, it made me feel better.

 

 

37 Comments on Perspective

  1. It’s true. I remember a guy telling me The Moody Blues was “before his time”. I was a bit flabbergasted, thinking, “This guy is 15 years older than I am….”

    My generation liked (likes) swill like Madonna, Whitesnake, and a bunch of early rappers (wrappers?) I can’t recall the names of.

    I remember the first time I heard Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs on the FM. I was knocked sideways. And this was 1984!

    8
  2. Two years ago on my stepson’s birthday, just to rub it in a bit, I informed him that he was “now” as old as I was when I met his mom. When Mrs. BAMO and I met, he was 18 and he (dis)regarded me as just some older guy who was hitting on his Mom. Thankfully, now, there is mutual respect. He has become a fine man and Daddy.

    9
  3. I had wrist surgery when I was 19….I asked the recovery room nurse if I would still be able to play the piano…..she ripped my catheter out and said no….I still can’t play the piano and pee with a limp…

    11
  4. Having a full head of hair, Fur (aptly named) is late to the “it’s depressing to get old” game. I lost my hair as a young adult and was called “Pops” by people who were 10 years older than me!

    13
  5. I tell the youngsters at work that I used to speak with people born in the 1800’s (my great grandparents, my wife’s great grandmother). Blows their minds.

    11
  6. I remember the guy told me the singer in the Robin Trower band was a big, fat black dude.

    “Quit smoking crack… the vocalist was James Dewar, a skinny fucking English dude who played the bass….”

    3
  7. I subscribe to Einstein’s “taco” theory (or maybe it’s a burrito) of time. The only thing that makes time’s passing obvious are the effects of aging — on everything. Oxidation. Thank God for the seasons, huh?

    (I could never stand Married With Children.)

    7
  8. Every time I see the people in video clips from the early 1900’s I say, “They’re all dead.” That didn’t use to be true. When I was a kid, there were Civil War Veterans still alive. But that was back in ’02.

    5
  9. Since Trower was mentioned. that was my first concert. . . in 1978.
    I’ve seen him about six or seven times since then.
    Great guitar player and one of my favorites.

    Also, Foghat was my second concert (also 1978) and then Alvin Lee in ’79.

    1
  10. I was born 13 years after world war II ended. All my life (even now) that seemed like ancient history. It has been almost 18 years since the 9/11 attacks, and that seems like a current event to me.

    13
  11. The building I currently work in was a hospital back in the mid 20th century.

    I have since meet several people who have stated that they (or their children) were born there. I got to thinking it must have been a pretty good hospital because I have yet to meet anyone who claims to have died there.

    10
  12. When I was young, I’d see old men wearing their WWII caps, Later, those same aged men were Korean War vets. Now they’re Vietnam vets. Pretty soon, I expect to see a wrinkled man wearing a cap from the first Gulf War.

    10
  13. I know a woman who remembers her grandpa who was a civil war vet!
    Also I only recently learned that there are photographs of Revolutionary Soldiers taken when they were elders, very close to our nation’s past we are, really.

    6
  14. Let’s be frank here:

    We were young men and women having fun. In the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Now we are the curmudgeon old men and women who they see fault on us who have been trying to hold the fort down for decades. Who the hell was looking out for US during those decades? But we don’t look to that as an excuse. We are fighting, unlike our father’s and mother’s did. They just got divorced and were pretty much just looking out for themselves.

    No, I don’t have issues.

    9
  15. I thought I was the only person who thought like this.

    I was born in San Francisco. The Great San Francisco Earthquake always seemed like a very long time before I was born. I am now 12 years older than the time that elapsed between the earthquake and when I was born.

    4
  16. In the early 2000’s I was taken aback when I would see something having its 100 anniversary and seeing the year it was established begin with a “19.”

    I have to write the date a lot at work. Earlier this year I was feeling a little confused but I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized that when I wrote the year simply as “19,” my brain thought I was not finishing it because of so many years of writing years as 19xx

    3
  17. Here’s another one for you: Today (4/2) is the anniversary of the 1968 release of Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Which was looking 33 years into the future, but which is now 18 years in the rear-view mirror.

    And tomorrow…Doris Day turns 96.

    4
  18. Both my grandfathers were born in the late 1800’s, my dad’s grandfather was born in the 1860’s and he died in 1950 3 years before I was born. My wife’s grandmother was born in 1904 the year after the Wright brothers first flight at Kitty Hawk and she died in 2001 at the age of 96. My dad’s oldest brother who died last year at 99 was born in Sept. 1918 two months before World War 1 ended, he also because of his training was a computer genius because the Navy taught him everything about electronics (back in the 40’s and 50’s) from ENIACS the giant computers that took up a whole room full of vacuum tube electronics to smart phones and all the new technology. Putting it all in perspective my parents and their siblings and grandparents lived thru times most of us can’t imagine from the first planes and automobiles, outdoor plumbing, before radio and TV, party lines on their phone service, spotty or no electricity in rural areas, movies etc. etc. and lived thru the depression and World War 2, Korea, the beginning of the Space program for my grandparents and many other marvels. And we now bitch and moan and complain because we have too much of our lives controlled by modern technology. We had a neighbor businessman who’s business was next to my dad’s gas station an elderly Jewish man named Stanley who I marveled with the day after the first moon landing in July 1969 when I was 16, to him it was one of the greatest things he ever saw in his life. And I can only wonder what my little grandchildren and their children will think of me and our generation 70 and 80 years from now. I hope they have good memories of us and not curse us for being so stupid socially and politically and spiritually.

    5

Comments are closed.