Shocking Events That Let You Know You're Old
Providence Journal
09.17.2003
I remember being shocked when typewriters began showing up in antique stores.
It's gotten worse.
You can now find early computers there - or in the antiques section of Web sites like Ebay.
It got me thinking about a new definition of old.
Old doesn't just apply to those who can remember life before airplanes or television.
You qualify if things you once considered cutting-edge technology are now antiques. Or when the latest trends you swear you embraced just yesterday are things the MTV generation never heard of.
So, today, a list.
- You know you're getting up there if you remember when:
- Your computer's ready-mode was a black screen with a single curser.
- Apple was bigger than Windows.
- Or should I say PCs, since for a while, there was no such thing as Windows.
- There was just "DOS."
- And they were called microcomputers instead of PCs.
- Contrary to free-market theory, your phone choices and bills were much easier because AT&T was a good old-fashioned monopoly.
- There was this amazing new video game called "Pong."
- And you thought it had the most advanced graphics imaginable.
- AOL was just another start-up online service that could easily have lost out to rivals called Compuserve and Prodigy.
- A 20-something guy named Dell came up with the nutty idea of selling computers by mail.
- Jane Fonda went from sex symbol, to feminist activist, to dutiful wife of a powerful man, to obscurity.
- And that powerful man was known not as Ted Turner founder of CNN - but "Blackbeard Among the Bluebloods" for winning the America's Cup while scandalizing Newport society with raucus behavior.
- And there was no question U.S. sailors would of course win the Cup - forever.
- It was called VD instead of an STD.
- The first true laptop computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80.
- And if you were hip, you referred to it affectionately as a TRASH-80.
- Burning a CD was the act of a pyromaniac.
- Sean Connery was Pierce Brosnan.
- The new walkaround phone that gave you astonishing mobility was a cordless one you could take around the house.
- And it got better reception than the one you can now take all over the country.
- Only wives got alimony.
- Steve Jobs ran Apple. I mean, the first time.
- There was a guy on 60 Minutes named Mike Wallace who was so old you figured he'd retire at the latest by 1990.
- TheMideast was simpler because Iran was run by a dictator called The Shah, who wanted power rather than Jihad.
- Mail was something you wrote on a piece of paper and put into a stamped envelope.
- And you didn't get 110 unsolicited pieces of it every morning promising to enhance your anatomical assets.
- No normal person had speakers on their computer.
- The diners at the next restaurant table were smoking cigarettes and you barely noticed.
- The only thing you knew about Robin Williams was he played a weird alien named "Mork" on television.
- A 1-gig hard drive seemed as big as a warehouse. (Today, most are 40-times that.)
- An 8-track tape the size of a paperback book was an advanced concept in compact music recording.
- Everyone knew what an LP was.
And now the final test of whether you're getting up there:
- Even though there are plenty of LPs in antiques stores, you still have 400 in your attic, because deep down, you still think the format will come back.