I Am Old Enough to...

[TechWife]

Send sympathy cards more frequently than wedding or baby cards.

Believe that life changing events are worthy of a hand written note.

What are you old enough to do?

 

Edited May 13, 2019 by TechWife

[bethben]

In six months, join aarp.  In a little over five years, but a home in a 55 and up community and be considered “an older adult”.  I’m slightly horrified.

[Tap]

I am old enough to know who I am and to know that certain traits aren't going to change. 🙂

 

[iamonlyone]

This made me think of my husband's last birthday when he made me laugh:

Me: This is a great age! You're young enough to still do things but old enough— [was intending to say something like "have the perspective to enjoy it, or wisdom to relax and enjoy"]

Husband: —but old enough to know better!

[Melissa in Australia]

When my Grandmother turned 60 she announced to the whole family that she was finally old enough to speak her mind - she is almost 90 now and still speaking her mind.

[TechWife]

2 hours ago, Melissa in Australia said:

When my Grandmother turned 60 she announced to the whole family that she was finally old enough to speak her mind - she is almost 90 now and still speaking her mind.

I want to speak my mind when I turn 60. Melissa, tell your she’s my hero! I’ve got a little over eight years to get there. 

[Chris in VA]

I'm old enough to remember when cable TV came out, and the attraction was that there were no commercials. I also remember when Elmo was introduced, and the Electric Company premiered. 

[Laura Corin]

I'm old enough to remember walking by old WWII bomb sites and getting the first colour TV any of my friends had seen. I'm old enough to be working to shed unnecessary baggage, and invest in interests and worthwhile projects for the next twenty years

[Shoeless]

Old enough to remember the old bell paging system from department stores.  

[Pawz4me]

As much as the introvert in me hates to say it, I am old enough to know that many interactions are best handled in person or by phone call rather than via email, social media, chat session or text.

I'm old enough to know that the Buddhist concept of impermanence is worth some careful study and consideration. It's helpful in understanding and accepting many of life's changes.

[BlsdMama]

Babysit the grandkids. 😉 (Plural.)

[Lady Florida.]

I'm old enough to remember watching a human first set foot on the moon. (watching on a grainy black and white tv)

I'm old enough to not care what others think yet old enough to know that sometimes it matters what others think.

I'm old enough to collect my teacher's pension but not yet old enough for Medicare.

I'm old enough to remember watching the coal truck deliver coal down the chute and into the basement of my grandparents' house. I also watched my grandfather shovel the coal into the furnace.

8 hours ago, Margaret in CO said:

Old enough to remember our party line! Interestingly enough, we STILL had it when I was pg with dd #2, and everyone on it had to agree not to be on at 3:00 pm, so I could send the results of my contraction monitor over a very primitive modem. We put the handset down on a little box and it warbled away. 

My grandparents had a party line. My same age cousin and I used to listen when our grandmother was babysitting both of us. We'd get caught and get in trouble because the people on the other end would think it was one of our grandparents listening in. They would have to keep apologizing and saying it was their grandkids.

Edited May 14, 2019 by Lady Florida.

[TheReader]

I'm old enough to
...watch children's friends getting married & graduating college....
...worry about losing my grandparents, sooner rather than later...
....finally more or less know who I am/what my sense of style is, and wear that, regardless....
...have other moms look up to me as the veteran hs mom (and not feel too fraudulent when they do)....
...think that I'd have a hard time voting someone into office who's younger than me....(but not so old that I'd have a hard time voting for someone older than me)

 

[Lady Florida.]

2 hours ago, TheReader said:

I'm old enough to

...think that I'd have a hard time voting someone into office who's younger than me....(but not so old that I'd have a hard time voting for someone older than me)

 

Eleven years ago I was already old enough to vote someone younger than me into the highest U.S. office. And I did. Twice.

it's not that hard really once you get used to how old you actually are. 😂

[TheReader]

3 minutes ago, Lady Florida. said:

Eleven years ago I was already old enough to vote someone younger than me into the highest U.S. office. And I did. Twice.

it's not that hard really once you get used to how old you actually are. 😂

maybe that's the answer to the opposite question for me...."how young are you"....still young enough to think younger than me is too young to lead our country. (I'm less twitchy about it for local stuff). Give me a few more years, it won't be so bad, I think.....

[Liz CA]

Old enough to remember how to change the speed on the record player and make the voice sound like the Smurfs.

[Guest]

I’m old enough to remember when the most progressive attorney in the office announced we were getting new computers that had this amazing feature called “Windows”, which would allow us to simultaneously have several documents open at once. 

I also remember standing in the office of my office manager, watching with fascination as her husband sent her IMs through America Online. 

I also remember my nephew introducing me to internet search engines by way of “Ask Jeeves”. Remember Ask Jeeves? He typed in a question about where to buy cribs; I was pregnant with my first kid (1996). 

And my first internet message board was Parent Soup. They had forums for every parenting topic you can think of, including one called, “Infants WITH foreskins”. 😝

[Lady Florida.]

2 hours ago, Quill said:

I’m old enough to remember when the most progressive attorney in the office announced we were getting new computers that had this amazing feature called “Windows”, which would allow us to simultaneously have several documents open at once. 

 

I quit teaching for a while to try and figure out if that was what I really wanted to do. During the five years before I realized teaching really was my calling and I went back, I held a number of different jobs. One was as a bookkeeper for a small one-owner company. I did payroll on the new computer, a Trash 80 (officially called a TRS 80). I also remember when WYSIWYG became a thing, and I remember using Netscape to access the internet. 

I think many of us are old enough to have used floppy discs, actually floppy 5 inch discs. 

Although I'm old enough to have used Prodigy and Compuserve I wasn't into computers then (other than my classroom's little Apple IIe that my students and I learned to use together). Dh however, was an active participant in message boards on both of those platforms. I only learned about them some time after we and I found out I'd fallen for a computer nerd. 😄  

Edited May 14, 2019 by Lady Florida.

[KidsHappen]

I am old enough that I remember saving computer documents on cassette tapes.

I remember party lines and black and white tv (and no tv or phone at all before that)

I lived in houses that had no central heat or indoor plumbing.

I am in the oldest living generation in my family.

I have several grandchildren/step grandchildren and great grandchildren are not terribly far off.  

 

[Kareni]

Old enough to have said, "First!" on the boards here.

Old enough to have been a child without seatbelts; my mother said when I was a baby, she used to put me in the backseat of the car in a laundry basket.

Remember the toffees in Australia that occasionally would have a two cent piece embedded within. (A toffee might have cost one cent, so it was a true prize albeit a choking hazard.) 

Remember buying cigarettes for my father when a pack cost 40 cents and a carton cost $4.00, and no one blinked at a child purchasing cigarettes.

Regards,

Kareni

[KidsHappen]

I also remember when ten cents would buy a stamp or pay for a local phone call or a trip to a public restroom.

[J-rap]

Well, I've noticed recently that most of the doctors at our local clinic are now younger than me!

And I remember when that peacock used to come on TV before a program and spread its feathers while the announcer said "In living color!"  Only ours was not in color and I could never understand why!

 

[LisaKinVA]

I'm old enough to have forgotten all of the stuff that I did or had that is completely irrelevant to today's life.

[Selkie]

I'm old enough to remember being a junior in college and a guy in one of my classes told me that he and his girlfriend, who was at school in another state, were able to send messages back and forth to each other on their computers. That seemed totally amazing at the time!

[Wheres Toto]

Gee, and I was still trying to convince myself that I'm one of the young'uns on this board.  😉

My first secretarial job we used Word in DOS.   We upgraded to Windows 3.0 while I was there.  I remember CompuServe, AIM, dial-up modems, 5 1/4 floppy disks.

I remember buying cigarettes for my mom as a kid, black and white tv, "remote" controls with a wire, the peacock, when Fox became the 4th network channel.

On a brighter note, I am old enough to accept myself for who I am - introvert, relaxed, not at all stylish, comfortable - and not really care what people think (most of the time).  I'm more confident in my abilities and less worried about pleasing everyone else (in some cases, anyone else).

[fairfarmhand]

Old enough to remember talking on the phone connected to a wall. I wish for it when I am hunting frantically for the cordless to find it in some random spot. (Anyone remember how hard it was to have a private conversation?)

[Lady Florida.]

5 hours ago, J-rap said:

 

And I remember when that peacock used to come on TV before a program and spread its feathers while the announcer said "In living color!"  Only ours was not in color and I could never understand why!

 

We got our first color tv in 1970. When I was a kid one of my aunts was the only one in the family who had a color tv (they also had no kids). Every year when The Wizard of Oz came on tv my and my cousin's family would go there so we could watch the second half in color. 

I'm old enough to remember when tv stations would play the national anthem and then go off the air until morning.

I'm old enough to remember when Ted Turner's channel, then known as Channel 17 (a uhf channel) went national. That was what is now TBS. 

[J-rap]

1 minute ago, Lady Florida. said:

We got our first color tv in 1970. When I was a kid one of my aunts was the only one in the family who had a color tv (they also had no kids). Every year when The Wizard of Oz came on tv my and my cousin's family would go there so we could watch the second half in color. 

I'm old enough to remember when tv stations would play the national anthem and then go off the air until morning.

I'm old enough to remember when Ted Turner's channel, then known as Channel 17 (a uhf channel) went national. That was what is now TBS. 

Oh my goodness, I remember the national anthem and then going off the air!  Every now and then I stayed up long enough to see it.  

When my dh and I were first married in the 1980s, our wedding present from my parents was our own black and white TV.  🙂  That lasted us a long time, so even some of our children remember having a black and white TV in the mid - late 90's - haha.

[Lady Florida.]

Speaking of black and white televisions, this happened to a friend of mine in the early 2000's.

Her family was visiting her mother. She and her husband stayed in her old room and their kids stayed in one of the bedrooms that once belonged to one of her siblings. The kids were excited to find a tv in the room but they came running out to tell her "We can't get Busha's tv to work". She went to investigate and realized it was a black and white tv. The kids thought it was broken. 😂😄😂

[Laura Corin]

My first computer lessons, at school in the mid-seventies, involved learning to write a single line of code, which the teacher then took by hand to Bristol University, where it was turned into a punch card. The next week I would learn that my code hadn't worked. 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Laura Corin

[Chris in VA]

oh gosh...I remember my parents bought a color TV to watch the moon landing only to find it was broadcast in black and white!

I remember running upstairs after seeing a news report on our basement TV, shouting, "Mom! A King died!" It took a moment for her to realize it was Martin Luther King, Jr. 

I remember being at the beach, with no TV, when the father of a family vacationing with us quietly went to the trunk of his car, and brought out a portable set, which he then set up in the combo livingroom/kitchen of our small beach apartment. Very solemnly, we sat around it in a tight group, watching our president resign because of Watergate. 

[Suzanne in ABQ]

"What's that stuff?"
"Some ceweal."
"Did you twy it?"
"I'm not gonna twy it. You twy it!"
"I'm not gonna twy it."

"Let's get Mikey!"
"Yeah!"
"He won't eat it. He hates evewything."

"He likes it! Hey, Mikey!!!!"

(Yeah, I'm old enough to remember every word of that commercial. Now, If I could only remember what I'm supposed to do this afternoon."

[Lady Florida.]

21 minutes ago, Patty Joanna said:

Old enough to admit to myself that I will not ever read Charles Dickens and also to give a rip who knows that.  :0)  

 

Aw, I love Dickens. But I'm also old enough to tell people there are too many books and too little time. Unless you're in school and have been assigned certain books, read what you want and don't worry about what anyone says you "should" read. (I won't touch Hemingway, Faulkner, or Woolf and I don't care what anyone thinks about that).

[HS Mom in NC]

I'm 46.

Another Era
...remember the butcher coming to the house to slaughter and bleed out a bull and take it for processing.
...eat sheep and cattle raised we for food.
...have seen real cowboys herding cattle (not guys with shiny boots and shiny trucks line dancing in bars calling themselves cowboys.)
...remember when border patrol didn't bother illegals as long as they were working on a farm or ranch.
...have gleaned fields of onions and cantaloupe legally.
...have listened to an elderly Native American talking about how her grandmother handled plague risk.
...have met an old lady who came to AZ in a covered wagon as a child.
...remember when my 10 years older brothers and all their peers went to school with shotguns clearly visible in the gun racks and handguns in the glove compartments of their trucks so they could dove hunt after school with their friends, unattended by any other adults.
...eating candy cigarettes without anyone being bothered by it.
...watching commercials  (We got a TIVO the year it came out.) and watching TV on the broadcaster's schedule.

Perspective
...know that people who seem to be getting away with it have lives that suck in other areas.
...know that FB/social media is the highlight reel, not a documentary, so I have no need to fuss about not measuring up.
...know that I have to deal with the consequences of my actions, so I don't need to make what other's think the deciding factor.
...know those lessons I learned the hard way were godsends, so I don't try to buffer my children from them after I've warned them.

Historical Events
...have seen the USSR fall and the wall come down.
...have written as a teen to friends serving in the military for a war that has since ended.
... have watched an assassination attempt of a president in office.

[Laura Corin]

@Homeschool Mom in AZI still glean for fresh peas!  The farmers around here plant peas for the Birdseye frozen food company and the machines always miss a bit at the edge when they cut - the plants are pushed over but not cut.  We have lovely fresh peas for a week or so after the harvest.

I visited a ranch in Texas around fifteen years ago that still herded on horseback.  It was a big place, but the philosophy was that they saw more from horseback and could be more aware of any issues.

[elegantlion]

I am old enough to be the parent of most of my cohort in grad school and many of them are non-traditional students. 

I am old enough to remember the first computer class ever offered by my high school...and not taking it because why would I need to work on computers. 

I am old enough to also speak my mind, yet have the wisdom to hold my tongue more often...because most of the time it's just not worth it. 

[lewelma]

I am old enough to have had my maternal great grandfather tell me stories about travelling to Oklahoma by covered wagon because his father had been in the Oklahoma land rush. 

I am old enough to have had my paternal grandmother tell me stories about how her grandfather lived with them when she was a girl, and how he would meet up with the other civil war vets on their front porch. She could never understand them because they were speaking German! 

[Lady Florida.]

1 hour ago, Homeschool Mom in AZ said:

I'm 46.

Another Era
...remember the butcher coming to the house to slaughter and bleed out a bull and take it for processing.
...eat sheep and cattle raised we for food.
...have seen real cowboys herding cattle (not guys with shiny boots and shiny trucks line dancing in bars calling themselves cowboys.)
...have gleaned fields of onions and cantaloupe legally.

...eating candy cigarettes without anyone being bothered by it.
.
... have watched an assassination attempt of a president in office.

I'm 17 years older than you but none of those first 4 quoted experiences were mine. I was raised in a city so no matter how old I am I would not have seen those things.

Yes to candy cigarettes (pretending to smoke them first 😲). Also, as others have mentioned, I used to get sent to the store to buy my mom's real cigarettes.

I have watched a sitting U.S. president get assassinated and watched his funeral on tv. I was home from school sick that day and remember when my grandmother called my mother to tell her. She told my mom "turn on the radio" because in those days you got breaking news from the radio, not the tv. 

Edited May 15, 2019 by Lady Florida.

[kbutton]

On 5/14/2019 at 3:49 PM, Lady Florida. said:

21 hours ago, Kareni said:

Remember buying cigarettes for my father when a pack cost 40 cents and a carton cost $4.00, and no one blinked at a child purchasing cigarettes.

I remember using Netscape to access the internet.

Fun thread. 

I remember the cigarette vending machines. 

I had to make sure the web-based help I wrote would display correctly in Netscape, lol! 

We had two rotary phones for a long time. I remember it being a big deal to get a touch tone phone. Both of the rotary phones lacked a phone jack--they were wired directly into the wall. 

I remember when it was no big deal to ride around in the bed of a pickup truck around town or on a short trip.

[kbutton]

Just now, kbutton said:

I remember when it was no big deal to ride around in the bed of a pickup truck around town or on a short trip.

Actually, now that I think about it, when I was in 5th grade, several of us went on a FIELD TRIP in the back of a teacher's covered pickup truck. The field trip was about 45 minutes or an hour away! No one thought anything of it. I think there were other kids in other private vehicles as well. 

We'd ride in the back of station wagons on substantial trips also, whether they had a fold down seat in the trunk area or not.

[Ausmumof3]

I feel pretty young round here.  I am old enough to have grown up without internet at home though. 

[mumto2]

So many fun memories here.......first color TV, man on the moon, Watergate...........OK, not all fun because I was so upset about Watergate.  It was summer and I couldn’t watch Captain Kangaroo.

 I had a small black and white TV that I loved for years......took it to college, my first apartment, even had it after we were married.  Hubby finally convinced me to give it to someone else because he had bought a color tv for that room.  I still think it was a bad decision.😉

 So for a new one ..........how about the Paul is Dead,  Beatles controversy.  I spent a whole lot of time with my finger gently pressing down playing that album backwards..........and my new neighbor (now my husband) was the kid who convinced me that the Beatles had switched Paul’s if I didn’t believe the pictures,  feet off the ground etc,  that it was all there played backwards.  We were telling the kids about this the other day........

Edited May 16, 2019 by mumto2

[Arcadia]

I have rode plenty of times on my adult relative’s lap in the front passenger seat of a sedan. That was how my maternal aunt could get three adults and five kids into a sedan before the days of seatbelts laws. There were less people speeding during the daytime then (illegal road racing was after 11pm).  I have rode with my cousins and nephews on my paternal aunt’s pickup/truck bed on rural roads. It was as bumpy and fun as an amusement park ride.

I can still figure out the difference between the tones of a fax machine and a dial up modem. My first computer runs DOS 3.3 and has a hard disk but my college computers needed a boot up 5.25” floppy disk. There were Yak (chat) IRC (chat), Lynx (text browser), Mozilla (browser), BBS, TIN (News reader), Telnet. Thankfully my college classes were post punch cards era. COBOL, FORTRAN and assembly language were common then.

I had a turntable (vinyl records) system, dual cassette player (so that you could make a copy), Walkman, one of the first Motorola flip phone (1991). My first laptop was $4k then in 1991 and my first Macintosh LCII was $2.5k in 1992. Nokia 3310 was very popular when I was working as there was so many different casing for it and it was one phone you could safely drop. Those were the days you could easily buy a cellphone battery as a replacement or backup because cellphones had a battery cover which was easy to access.

[Laura Corin]

For one of my first jobs, I was desktop publishing user manuals with software that was a lot less powerful than Word is today. The problem was that my PC couldn't cope with the size of diagram files, so we had to paste those in by hand after we had printed out the manuals, then Tippex over the joins. I was working for PC-maker Acer in Taiwan.

[Momto6inIN]

Just today I had to explain to my 15 year old daughter that you didn't use to be able to get groceries at Walmart or Target but had to go to a whole separate grocery store, so I guess I'm old enough to have lived before the days of Super Walmart and Super Target 😊

[lynn]

To remember blue light specials and lunch counters.

Put playing cards on my bicycle spokes with a clothes pins

have a 4 digit  phone number and dial on a rotary.

turn the tv UPN(?) to watch shows after school.

 

 

[Ottakee]

1 hour ago, Momto6inIN said:

Just today I had to explain to my 15 year old daughter that you didn't use to be able to get groceries at Walmart or Target but had to go to a whole separate grocery store, so I guess I'm old enough to have lived before the days of Super Walmart and Super Target 😊

I was in college when I went to my first Walmart....an hour drive from our college town.

I also remember when MTV started.....and they actually showed music videos.

[Momto6inIN]

39 minutes ago, Ottakee said:

I was in college when I went to my first Walmart....an hour drive from our college town.

I also remember when MTV started.....and they actually showed music videos.

I don't remember my first Wallmart trip, but I do remember when the full length video for Michael Jackson's Thriller came out on MTV!

[Kareni]

56 minutes ago, Ottakee said:

I also remember when MTV started.....and they actually showed music videos.

I remember that, too!

Now thinking of musical memories, I once saw Sonny and Cher perform live in Las Vegas. 

Regards,

Kareni

[J-rap]

2 hours ago, Kareni said:

I remember that, too!

Now thinking of musical memories, I once saw Sonny and Cher perform live in Las Vegas. 

Regards,

Kareni

I used to love watching Sonny and Cher on TV!