Practically a Hundred

“Joe, Why so blue? You should be happy today.”
“Sorry, hon. I’m just feeling old.”
Don’t worry. I’m just going through a temporary funk. I recently had a birthday. Okay, it was yesterday. The wife surprised me by taking time off from work and knowing me so well, she suggested a day at the beach. We relaxed enjoying the peaceful quiet offered to anyone willing to walk for twenty-five minutes down the shoreline. We find that puts us a safe enough distance away from anyone toting a kid or a boom box. Just us old fogies here!
“So, Joe, you caught up to me again.”
Each year she just can’t wait to say that to me. She is sixty-two days older than me and I relish those sixty-two days while I can say I’m married to an older woman and tease her about her being older than me. On her birthday I said …
“Wow, honey. You’re fifty-seven years old now. How does it feel being that old?”
“Shut-up, stupid. Answer that yourself in a month.”
“Uhm? Excuse me! That’s two months and two days, sweetie!”
I think the mild gloom I’m experiencing is because I’m so close to being sixty. I didn’t mind turning thirty, forty or even fifty, but for some reason being sixty sounds really old. Even the AARP, who has been bugging me for years to join their club, is advising me to hurry up because time is running out.
“Joe, lighten up, we’re really not that old.”
“We’re not?”
As soon as I got home I started up the old “Brain Train” to take a trip down memory lane. “Alllllllllllllll Aboard!”
So here we go. Search on “1951”, the year I said my first word … “Bwaaaaahhh!” Translation … “Hello, I’m practically, Joe.” Mom and dad hadn’t named me yet.
(Click.) Oh God! I arrived before hair spray, frozen foods, credit cards, ballpoint pens, radar and digital clocks.
Here's a link to 1950's phrases. (Click.)
When I was a kid we spoke a whole different language from kids today. Here are a couple of examples.
2008: “Wa’sup dawg? Lets chill at your crib with those crazy-ass biaches yo! Aight?”
1951: “Hey daddy-o. Let’s find some hip chicks and go to your pad.”
2008: “I’ll take my 45 and put a cap in your ass!”
1951: It doesn’t even translate. A 45 was a vinyl record. We did, however, play cowboys and Indians with cap guns but with pretend horses not donkeys.
(Click.) Hmmm … here’s a site explaining how the moral values of people living back in the fifties differ from today. It says here that most couples back then didn’t live together until after they got married. Society provided children with a happier childhood, producing happier children who in the process became more responsible adults. And, authority was respected and appreciated; this included the police, presidents, and teachers. Can we state in fact that here, in 2008, we have progressed? It was like another world back then.
Crap! This is bringing me down again. Quick, let's click on that link. (Click.)
Wow! A gallon of gasoline was only twenty-five cents and a Chevy Coupe sold for $600. Yearly salaries averaged less than $3000. Cigarettes were twenty cents a pack. Nobody knew the dangers of smoking. Pantyhose weren’t invented. Women wore silk stockings with garter belts. (Click.) Hmmm … what do we have here?“I see you’re feeling better, Joe.”
”Oops!” *Startled … Brain Train comes to screeching halt! (Click. Click.)
“Hon, really, blogging keeps me feeling young.”