Last week I linked to a series of photographs that made me feel awfully old. Well, looks like I'm not alone. Stephan Pastis appears to get sort of that way, too.
Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the 'Pearls Before Swine' Web page.
Peter
This cartoon made me think of a book I read back when dinosaurs roamed . . . and then I remembered its’ name! But I think the cartoon is the proverbial “picture worth a thousand words”.
ReplyDeleteThe Book - from Wikipedia: “Future Shock is a book written by the futurist Alvin Toffler in 1970. In the book, Toffler defines the term "future shock" as a certain psychological state of individuals and entire societies. His shortest definition for the term is a personal perception of "too much change in too short a period of time".
The recent anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing reminded me of another way in which the world has changed. I grew up with the space program and can still name the original seven astronauts without any difficulty. A few days before the landing, I was at a Civil Air Patrol Summer Encampment at Selfridge Air Force Base in Michigan. I was disappointed when our group had to move on just when my turn came to try the F-106 instrument simulator.
ReplyDeleteThe next day however, my number came up in one of the daily drawings for demonstration flights. I got to go for a ride in a T-33 jet trainer. A short training session in the ejection seat mock-up and I was soon strapped into the back seat for what is to this day one of my most memorable aviation experiences. I doubt that any 15 year old gets to go for that kind of ride anymore, and I certainly wouldn't trade that memory for all the modern gadgets enjoyed by today's youth.
Sigh, don't remind me... I was 18 when Armstrong took those first steps on the moon. I watched it in a bar in Rome...
ReplyDeleteMe, too, Old NFO. I was stationed at Millington NAS, attending AE school (just before I volunteered - yeah, I know - for flight duty and got into the AW program). Watched it in the barracks that night with a whole bunch of other sailors.
ReplyDeletefast richard:
ReplyDeleteworked with a guy in the early 80's who soloed on his 16th birthday in his dad's P-51. A stock razorback, IIRC. THAT had to be a standout memory!
Reality bites when you have to enter the year you were born on some websites. And you scroll and you scroll.
ReplyDeleteHey Peter;
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm not as old as some of the fossils *Cough* "Old NFO", but Timbucktoo is right on when you enter the birthday and you have to keep scrolling. Or when you go to a convenience store to buy gas or what have you and they have the "Year Born" for people to buy tobacco and Beer and I think "damm, I have socks and clothing and truck older than that.
Yup, still remember those heavy old rotary dial phones and the clicking noise in ear as you dialed. Kinda wish I had kept one around for my kids to see I am not making them up. :^)
ReplyDeleteMy great grandmother was born in the 1890's in Germany. She remembered a life before electricity, automobiles, radio or TV. She lived to see men walk on the moon. She always marveled that she lived during the most wonderful times.
ReplyDeleteOldNFO, at least you're dealing honestly with the reality of your age by boldly proclaiming it in your online handle. If it'll make you feel any younger, I did run into one of the surviving original Tuskegee airmen the other day - you're not that old!
ReplyDeleteAbout a decade an a half ago, one of my neighbor's kids came over to get my help on a school report. He needed to find out what it was like in the US during the Vietnam war, and his parents weren't old enough to remember anything from that long ago.
ReplyDeleteGlad to help, kid. Get off my lawn.
"... I was 18 when Armstrong took those first steps on the moon. I watched it in a bar in Rome..."
ReplyDeleteSorry, dood, but - that ain't really old -
I watched that - on a friend's crappy second-hand T.V. - while we were both most of the way through Graduate School, at S.I.U. in Carbondale, IL...and I had already finished my undergrad degree (of course), graduated (of course)...and been working full-time for three years, before I started Grad School the previous Fall...I was 26.Years.Old!
THAT's old!