Yesterday one of my students asked me to give myself one point for everything on this meme I have done:
Said meme is a list of 20 old people things. The game is to give yourself one point for every one of these retro activities you have engaged in at some point in your life. There are twenty things listed.
I considered the list for a moment and then answered "27."
"But there are only 20 things!" my student insisted.
True. But kids: I am so Old that I racked up considerably more than 20 points here. Behold:
We had one in my house until 1998. 1998 was the year touch-tone service came to our county. Yes, we lived that far out in the sticks.
I have used floppy disks in three sizes: 8-inch, 5.25-inch, and 3.5-inch. Also it's "disk," not "disc." Though I'd love to play some 8-inch floppy disc golf.
I still have the one I used in college. It still works. I just don't use it much anymore because I type faster than it does. (I can also never find a keyboard I like for this reason - most mechanical switches still feel slow but I wear out membranes quickly.)
Gave myself an extra point here because I grew up owning both a 110 AND a 35mm. I'm not sure my students even know what a 110 cartridge looks like.
I did that this morning on my way to work. (The CD was "Days of Thunder" by The Midnight, in case you're wondering.)
Gave myself another extra point here because I have also listened to 8-track tapes.
I own more vinyl than I do CDs. Even if we aren't counting the recent resurgence of vinyl, I had a reasonable collection of both 33s and 45s as a kid. (I did not personally own any 78s, but my grandparents did, and I listened to theirs.)
I kinda feel like I should get two points here for owning, at various times, both a Walkman and a Discman (yes, the brand name versions). I also owned a tiny mp3 player that ran on a single AA battery and held about ten mp3s. I loved that thing. I beat the hell out of it.
Do the children not do this anymore? Tragic.
I still own a VCR. and VHS tapes. It's amazing how cheaply you can buy VHS tapes at yard sales and thrift stores these days. No resurgence in VHS as a medium. Which is fine - I rarely use the VCR because the tapes are fragile. BUT WE HAVE IT.
I have both sent AND received faxes. On a fax machine. None of this "email a PDF and it comes out the other end as a fax" nonsense. No, I have done this in the era when there were no PDFs and you had to ssh your way into a bulletin board to get your email. My students think "ssh" is a thing I say to them when they're too rowdy in the library.
I mourn the end of childhoods that made it easy to do this. I'm very tempted to buy my niblings a radio cassette recorder just so they can experience the joy of broadcast piracy.
Giving myself three points here because I have rented videos (on VHS! one time on Betamax!) from Blockbuster, Family Video, AND the video rental store slash ice cream store slash gas station slash bait shop on the lake near my childhood home.
I would love to give myself multiple points here for each generation of modem I have used for this, but then I'd have to explain "baud" to the children, and we'd be here all day. I know when to pick my battles.
It blew young minds when I pointed out that they can go use a phone book RIGHT NOW if they want to. We have one in the library.
Still my preferred way to yell at politicians.
I have a book of county maps for my state in my car, as well as those folding paper maps for this state, several surrounding states, and two Canadian provinces. I have used them to save other people's asses so many times when said people had no GPS access. I will never let them go.
I still own a dictionary. And I'm not talking about the several dictionaries we have in the library. I have a Webster's Collegiate from like 1982. And yes, I do still occasionally use it.
I did not give myself an extra point for owning both the 2024 World Book and the 111GB Zim file of Wikipedia. Though I do have both. I'm pretty sure the meme just meant the World Book. I OWN an encyclopedia, present tense. (I also owned the 1986 Junior Britannica and the 1964 Britannica as a kid.)
Kids, you will understand the occasional value of the paper check when you become an adult and realize that nobody who does major house repairs will take credit cards and you really don't want to carry around $15,000 in cash.
...actually, with the way the housing market is going, maybe you won't.
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