Changes

I'm not sure if this is from 2000 or 2001, but it sure made me feel old!


FEELING OLD

Just in case you weren't feeling too old today, this will certainly change things. Each year the staff at Beloit College in Wisconsin put together a list to try to give the faculty a sense of the mindset of that year's incoming freshmen.

Here is this year's list:

The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were born in 1982.

They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan Era and probably did not know he had ever been shot.

They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged.

They were 11 when the Soviet Union broke apart and do not remember the Cold War.

They have never feared a nuclear war.

They are too young to remember the space shuttle blowing up.

Their lifetime has always included AIDS.

Bottle caps have always been screw off and plastic.

Atari predates them, as do vinyl albums. The expression you sound like a broken record means nothing to them. They have never owned a record player.

They have likely never played Pac Man and have never heard of Pong.

They may have never heard of an 8 track. The Compact Disc was introduced when they were 1 year old.

They have always had an answering machine.

Most have never seen a TV set with only 13 channels, nor have they seen a black-and-white TV.

They have always had cable.

There has always been VCRs, but they have no idea what BETA is.

They cannot fathom not having a remote control.

They were born the year that Walkmen were introduced by Sony.

Roller-skating has always meant inline for them.

Jay Leno has always been on the Tonight Show.

They have no idea when or why Jordache jeans were cool.

Popcorn has always been cooked in the microwave.

They have never seen Larry Bird play.

They never took a swim and thought about Jaws.

They can't imagine what hard contact lenses are.

They don't know who Mork was or where he was from.

They never heard: " Where's the beef?", " I'd walk a mile for a Camel", or "de plane, de plane".

They do not care who shot J.R. and have no idea who J.R. is.

Michael Jackson has always been white.

Kansas, Chicago, Boston, America, and Alabama are places, not groups.

McDonalds never came in Styrofoam containers.

They don't have a clue how to use a typewriter.

Oh, Man! Now I really do feel old! Thanks a lot!! LOL

Actually, a few weeks back, some girl friends and I went out to dinner and we were carded by the waitress. She didn't seem fazed at all that we were over a decade older than the legal drinking age. Made us all feel good!

Oh boy! I am only 28 years old and I do feel old! Please don't tell me that I will be walking with a cane real soon. I have started to search for gray hair and wrinkles. Yikes!

This was also in my e-mail. I don't know how exact 100 years ago is, but I can imagine it was true for the turn of the 20th century:


It May Be Hard to Believe That A Scant 100 Years Ago . . .

The average life expectancy in the United States was forty-seven.

Only 14 percent of the homes in the United States had a bathtub.

Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.

There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved roads.

The maximum speed limit in most cities was ten mph.

Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the twenty-first most populous state in the Union.

The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.

The average wage in the U.S. was twenty-two cents an hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year. A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2500 per year, a veterinarian between $1500 and $4000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5000 per year.

More than 95 percent of all births in the United States took place at home.

Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."

Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.

Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.

Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason, either as travelers or immigrants.

The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.

Drive-by-shootings -- in which teenage boys galloped down the street on horses and started randomly shooting at houses, carriages, or anything else that caught their fancy -- were an ongoing problem in Denver and other cities in the West.

The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was thirty. The remote desert community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and their families.

Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet.

Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.

There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.

One in ten U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.

Some medical authorities warned that professional seamstresses were apt to become sexually aroused by the steady rhythm, hour after hour, of the sewing machine's foot pedals. They recommended slipping bromide -- which was thought to diminish sexual desire -- into the women's drinking water.

Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health."

Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine.

Punch card data processing had recently been developed, and early predecessors of the modern computer were used for the first time by the government to help compile the 1900 census.

Eighteen percent of households in the United States had at least one full-time servant or domestic.

There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S. annually.