... and you look into it and decide it's not "smart" or "clever" and thus do not want the new Spooky game.

So I guess I'm not "old" then, despite turning 59 soon. Sweet!

I'm sorry, you're old at 41, I'm not at 58. C'est la vie.

My daughter (17) has developed the unfortunate habit of calling me "dude" (along with everyone else) and somehow it bothers me coming from her.

I usually say, in my best Ajax Duckman voice, "I'm not dude, I'm Dod!" Of course, she's too young to get the reference, but I don't care, because I'm old.

Speaking of which, I've been meaning to post in this thread: you know you are old when, two weeks later, you are still excited about the good deal you got on a refrigerator.

On a land line, naturally!

Yeah, if only they weren't so deadly efficient at piercing skulls.

Hey, I know! Bring them back but require everyone to wear helmets whenever they are enjoying the outdoors, maybe?

That's another one, I ride my bike on and off, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna ride around with one of those idiotic helmets on.

They're fine for kids likely to do things like shooting out from between parked cars or other such dangerous acts borne of inexperience or carelessness, but it's unnecessary for my own wary noggin.

I live in Wisconsin, and I refuse to (seriously) consider myself old until I can no longer handle dealing with snow in my driveway using nothing but a shovel.

(But when the neighbor with a front end loader wants to help out after a heavy snow, I don't complain! )

I also ditched my smelly riding lawnmower (too much work steering around all these trees) and bought a EGO POWER+ cordless electric self-propelled walk-behind mower. Man, I love this thing! Can't say enough good about it.

Lightweight, easy to maneuver.

Charge lasts an hour at full power (a bit less if grass is extra long or you overuse the propulsion) and recharges in under an hour.

No gas or oil (obviously), almost no maintenance. Flip it over anytime you like, nothing to leak. No gas station runs.

So quiet! Can even mow at night, it's less noisy than a weed whacker. Even has a headlight, the low angle of which really helps you see where you've already mowed (as opposed to the one high up on a riding mower).

Same battery can be used on their other tools. Thinking about a chain saw (speaking of trees...)

The recharging station is bad ass, looks like something out of Star Trek.

Unexpected bonus: I swear, the absence of gas fumes and combustion exhaust actually seems to ameliorate my allergies, they're nowhere near as bad without the added irritants from a gas engine.

And I'd much rather get some exercise by mostly just walking than by cranking that riding mower's steering wheel around constantly, much easier on the ol' shoulders.

Anyway, I guess you know you are "old" when you give an unpaid, unsolicited testimonial for a damn lawn mower because you love it that much.

What? Thanks to POTUS, cottonm4 is getting so old he needs his own bp monitor?

No, I don't. Please enlighten me about how the POTUS is responsible for letting vets take home BP monitors like they have since 2002.

Sounds excessive. How about littering, 20 years hard labor or what?

A little better, but the death penalty for anything is barbaric. And in the town square? Sounds like you might have been happier in the middle ages. But there was no pinball then, hmmm, tough call.

What reaction? She's the one that spills the beans! (And Calgon is a water softener.)

Who remembers when Aunt Jemima only had pancake mix, and they decided to have her hawk syrup as well?

Aunt Jemima pancakes without her syrup
Are like the spring without the fall
There's only one thing worse in this whole universe
That's no Aunt Jemima at all!

And now the "one thing worse" has come to pass...

Yeah, she raised her eyebrows just a bit too quickly. My criticism was always that I thought a Chinese laundry would buy their Calgon in bulk, not a small retail box. Or install a water softener!

Or just google for scans of them, plenty out there.

You have to modify your go-to pinball playing stance so as not to strain your shoulders.

Even then, not sure I could make it through a long tournament any more. Almost glad to get a year off.

As you age, it goes from "no pain, no gain" to "no strain, no pain"!

While if you're young, you embrace the lack of social decorum and decency and make WAP the #1 song in the country.

From only seeing his name in print, for years I seriously thought "Suge" Knight was pronounced "sooj."

I couldn't name one thing he's done, I just saw the name here and there.

How should it be spelled? Sug? Shug? Shoog? I just know it shouldn't be Suge. That e implies a long u.

Question: do you ever get old enough to be glad when someone calls you to discuss your Medicare options?

Personally it drives me crazy since I'm not even old enough to qualify for it!

But I also envision, all too easily, a class of lonely old folks who are thrilled to have anyone to talk to at all.
Downer, sorry.

Am I old? Every time a Pizza Hut ad claims that "Nobody out-pizzas the Hut" I mutter something to the effect of "Yes, because it is impossible, since there is no verb 'to pizza.'"

Meanwhile, if they made Breaking Wind an Olympic sport, old age would be an advantage!

I am so old and jaded, I can find something to bitch about in every single Xmas/holidays song I hear.

Don't get me started! Seriously, I've considered writing a standup routine, some of my observations are pretty funny. But probably only to me...

This reminded me of a post I responded to in the Childhood Toys thread, about someone only having a stick and hoop.

I wonder what you are talking about.

Bluetooth uses non-ionizing RF energy, and is thus harmless; even at high energy levels the most it could do to tissue is heat it.
And Bluetooth is a relatively recent innovation, many do not consider it capable of high fidelity even. I'm pretty confident that Neil used wired, even if it did matter. It's not like drummers need to walk around while playing!

The same goes for cell phones. No correlation to cancer.
https://www.fda.gov/radiation-emitting-products/cell-phones/radio-frequency-radiation-and-cell-phones

I'm glad I'm not old enough to start worrying about every crackpot idea that comes along!

You know you are old when you talk like a hillbilly for comedic effect, but no one laughs, because they think that it's just your normal voice.

You know you're old when... um, er... I forgot what I was going to say.

I hate movies with constant unrealistic escapes from death, superheroes or not.

Just semi-suffered through WW84 before it goes away from HBOMax after today. It was fun, but, hello, remember physics? Wow, so many dumb things about it.

"I have this moron thing I do, it's called THINKING?" - George Carlin
You and me both, George.

Epiphany time:

You know you are old when you realize that something, it doesn't really matter what, that you had thought was stupid, was actually pretty cool. And you can admit it.

And you think, am I finally becoming wise?

P.S. Or vice versa.

They are banned in many countries, in Tennessee, and in St Paul, MN.

They aren't labeled as "candy cigarettes" any more, but come on.

Too active, I'm guessing? I can relate, my regular parakeet Bob demanded a lot of attention back in the late 80s. Letting him have the run of the house went to his little pea brain.

Still miss the little bugger. He appears in my dreams occasionally to this day. Hi, Bob! Hi, Bob!

Gotta love using glorified violence to sell a slow poison!

... when you spend two days in bed, wondering what you did to make your lower back so angry at you.

Hate to admit, it wasn't from moving one, so if it was related it must be just from having to stoop and reach while adjusting switches on Rick & Morty. Guess we didn't evolve to do that, especially at 60!

Oh come on, "You look nice today" will land you in jail?

If one's idea of flirting is objectifying shit like "Nice ass, honey" then it was never acceptable.

(Actually, if "complements" are the problem, better be sure to wear clothes that don't match!)

Well, you took the air out of that joke!

Sure, if you believe the BS the media spews in the name of the almighty ratings. Fortunately it is BS and real people don't actually behave in this manner.

Real people appreciate sincere compliments.

And even if someone takes offense, it won't "land you in jail." Give me a break.

In the scenario you posit above, I'd respond, "I was just being nice, honey, don't get your panties in a wad." And I still wouldn't go to jail.

Takes wits to recognize wit. Not my problem!

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being witty, and that is not being witty."

Either that, or compromise the integrity of the artist's choice of track order by rearranging them into four groups of songs that all last about the same amount of time. You know how your brain will sometimes preview the next song, from memory, when a song that is playing ends? I remember being thrown by the differences between vinyl and 8 track in this regard.

It was also lame how, if you didn't like a song and changed tracks, it dumped you into the middle of a different song. And rewinding was impossible, and fast forward was not a universal feature. The tapes were easy to change, I'll give it that. Radio stations used a similar tech (Fidelipacs) for decades due to their ease of use -- just stick it in!

It really is astonishing, when you think about it, to have been alive to witness this technology evolve. From the vagaries of 8 tracks to entire libraries of music on tiny little RAM cards the size of your pinkie fingernail! Almost makes vaccine nanochips eound plausible. (But no, tech is not there yet. Also: yeah, right.)

Back in my day, we didn't have these round, shiny steel balls. All we had was rocks, and you put them in your game and they smashed and gouged everything to pieces, and we all said boo-hoo, now my playfield is all dimpled and destroyed. And that's the way it was, and we liked it!

download (2) (resized).jpeg

Parkour!

How could I forget it? When a local radio station changed formats years ago, it actually promoted itself for a week as the "All Louie, Louie" station as an advertising ploy. I sort of dug it! Mostly the Kingsmen version, but there were other versions sprinkled in as well. I was almost sad when they came clean and went to a plain old oldies format.

I also have a book around here somewhere about the song, and its allegedly obscene lyrics. Very interesting.

I don't know that it ever did, but here is not the place to discuss it.

The dead people were at least able to hold still for the picture! The photographs from way back then required the subjects to hold still for 15 to 90 seconds or more, depending on the technology used. That's why they didn't smile, and slight movements helped make the results extra creepy.

You know you are old when you drive off to go to the store, and have to go back when you don't remember whether you shut the garage door.

And when you get back, you pull into the garage and go back into the house, forgetting to go to the store at all!

Don't worry, he already said he didn't know.

And besides, cotton already pinned her:

The actress's name was Virginia Christine, a name I was not familiar with. She was in movies starting in 1943, and on TV beginning in 1951. Credits include The Mummy's Curse, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.

As Mrs. Olson, she was always on about how "Mountain Grown" coffee is the richest kind. The "Best part of waking up" jingle was created when Ms. Christine retired in the 80's. She passed away in 1996.

I have remarked before, you know you are old when the best part of waking up is waking up, not having died in your sleep. I'm sure Virginia would agree!

In grade school, 5th grade I believe it was, we could bring in our own 45s to play in class on occasion.

One time I brought "Surfin' Bird" by the Trashmen. When I got it back, someone had snapped it in half.

Another time, I brought "Carry Me, Carrie" from Dr Hook and the Medicine Show. The B side was "Freaker's Ball," which featured lyrics such as "The fags and the dykes, they boogyin' together, the leather freaks are dressed in all kinds of leather." (What did I know? I was 11!) Teacher never played either side in class, but I never got that one back at all! And I seem to remember my parents getting a call.

I would hope not, depending on context!

My doctor told me last week that my chronically stiff neck on one side is probably just old age.

You mean eventually I'll hurt like this all over?

Yes, it's funny how many stores play a choice of music seemingly designed to repel customers.

Well, it's not so funny while I'm in there being subjected to it! It's hard to concentrate on shopping while one's skin is crawling, aghast that anyone would listen to this stuff voluntarily! (I keep thinking of the Rush lyric "thank your stars you're not that way, turn your back and walk away")

Um, hello? Mr Store Manager? You can't go wrong with Classic Rock, it's the most popular genre (not by sales but when people are asked) and almost no one hates it.

I think music in general has been trending toward stupid for a long time. This is borne out by objective research that I don't feel like googling at the moment.

I just need to remember to bring in my bluetooth headphones! Dunno why I don't always bring them, then I wouldn't have to listen to commercials, either!

(Lest anyone think I sound like a fuddy duddy, I have no problem with the loud alt rock when I accompany my daughter to Hot Topic!)

I wouldn't blame the satellite radio, they have channels for almost any genre you can think of. So many channels to fill that they resort to having some named after certain artists, playing just that artist's stuff and sometimes similar material.

Famous Dave's plays that Delta Blues as atmosphere, the way Italian restaurants should stick to unobtrusive opera and instrumental classical music.

Ironically, Muzak is not played in elevators much anymore, but they are still around. In popular culture, it gets referenced a lot as a joke when some unlikely popular tune is parodied in Muzak style.

You're right! I didn't read far enough. Stupid Wikipedia doesn't know that it should say "was a brand" instead of "is," when the brand has been retired.

Don't forget to hydrate!

Or to see a man blithely watering the sidewalk in a decent residential neighborhood in Green Bay with neither garden hose nor watering can...

Huh, maybe I'm not old after all...

That woman is more of a woman than all those boob jiggling airheads put together.

Who is she? I'd like to see a pic of her smiling.

$6.70 a pack times 2 a day times 30 days is over $400. Almost five large per year!

Nope, Neptune.

My own is so-so, but I do remember the mnemonic "My very energetic mother just served us nine pies."

Although with Pluto demoted, I now prefer my own version, "My very epicurean mother just served us naan."

Why do people say "nuttier than a fruitcake" but no one says "fruitier than a nutcake"?

At least you weren't barefoot?

Hide something romantic in the dirt cup as insurance maybe?

I turned 61 today, and I realized you know you're old when you look forward to getting even older so that you can start stating your age in hexadecimal again.

(When I was 57 (base 10) I could say I was 39 (base 16), but at 58 saying you are 3A ruins it.
When I get to 64 I'll be 40!)

Disclaimer: I realize this is silly.

I never bowl because, oddly, it invariably brings on an attack of tendinitis in my feet.

I probably just need to stretch more, but I find I don't have time to stretch my feet every day just in case I ever decide to go bowling!

Probably been 15 years since I even tried to bowl. No doubt other things would hurt too afterward nowadays. I'm looking at you, shoulders. (I can't even lean on a pin I'm playing for very long.)

Growing old is just a process of finding more reasons not to do more things, I think.

I have questions!

How do you use it? Do you fill it with oil and make the hogs go through it?

Why is it antique, that I would need to be old to recognize it? Are they no longer used? Has hog oiling technology advanced beyond our wildest dreams?

Why would one need to oil their hogs in the first place? When they get too squeaky?

Oh, they rub on the outside. I wondered how they'd fit through the middle.

I presume we're not talking motor oil (especially used!)? I guess they would like mineral oil, there are "models" on the Internet who like to rub it all over themselves, or so I've heard.

Wow, Meat Loaf and now Louie Anderson, on the same day.

Edit: and oh cripes, you gotta be kidding, now Lyman? WTF?

What, pronounced "yakyow"? I doubt it will catch on.

He "stole" over 1000 patents worth of inventions, riiiiight.

https://interestingengineering.com/thomas-edison-visionary-inventor-or-villain#:~:text=Edison%20did%20not%20create%20everything,not%20a%20villain%20or%20thief.

Very little, apparently. Tell me, what are some of the "many" patents and ideas Edison stole from Tesla?

If anything, Edison blew it by not adopting Tesla's polyphase AC for power distribution, instead pushing his DC vision which would have required power stations within a mile of every customer and which could not be stepped up or down in voltage like AC can via transformers. He tried to discredit AC by calling it too dangerous, even electrocuting animals in public demonstrations with it! Thank goodness for George Westinghouse!

http://edison.rutgers.edu/tesla.htm
https://ttkmeup.com/blog/2019/10/18/energy-wars-did-thomas-edison-steal-nikola-teslas-inventions

That's as may be, but employers take credit for employees' innovations all the time.

At any rate, that one incident is hardly proof that

which was the assertion I had trouble with. That is just a popular myth. In the real world, all inventors are mostly simply trying to improve existing ideas. Edison was indeed a genius, if any inventor ever was.

Ehhhhhhh, I would have to assume that while this subterfuge might be more common than we might guess, I can't buy it being the case on "most of my favorite albums"!

I don't doubt that it happens, but "on most of my favorite albums" is ludicrous hyperbole.

You're old when it raises your blood pressure to see unfunny and/or uncaptioned photos in a "funny captioned photos" thread.

Well, not so much the photo itself, moreso when the poster defends it as valid because it's an "off topic" thread!

Never say never. Is "the worst school shooting in Michigan's history" less than three months ago enough evidence to lay this one to rest? (3 dead, 8 wounded)

https://www.catholicnews.com/update-clergy-comfort-students-community-after-tragic-high-school-shooting/

Also, so what? Much smaller class sizes and 1/22 as many kids enrolled as in public schools would account for most of any discrepancy.

Google failed me there, I should have read further, but still there's Gonzaga University in 1971, where a 21-year-old man shot and wounded four people on campus before he was killed by police.

And again, so what? Is there something special about Catholic schools beyond the factors I pointed out? What are you getting at?

I don't remember whether that was posted before or not.

Heck, I've seen the exact same picture posted in the "Funny Captions Thread" six posts apart!

Careful with those naps, I saw a recent news article about a link with Alzheimer's.

https://www.everydayhealth.com/dementia/excessive-daytime-naps-may-signal-early-dementia

Of course, a correlation doesn’t necessarily mean the naps cause the dementia, they might just be indicative. Basically, they found that the naps got longer faster in people eventually diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

I stopped needing naps myself once I no longer had to get up early to try and get the kiddo to school.

Have you guys seen or tried the latest "old man challenge"?

The test is to stand on one foot, barefooted, not leaning on anything, with your socks and shoes, laces untied, on the ground next to you, and proceeding to pick them up and put them on and tie them, without steadying yourself against anything or putting both feet on the ground before you are finished.

I pulled it off first try, with my daughter as witness, so I guess I'm not old despite being 61! I plan to check whether I can still pass the test on future birthdays, if not more often.

Good thing I'm not old, I have so much to do!

Ya doy, in most cases stopping is better than not stopping, despite whatever ailment it already garnered you!

I call BS. With gas prices adjusted for inflation, and more efficient cars nowadays, the cost now is about the same.

True, there's cruising, and then there's cruising!

Speaking of leaded gas, Ethyl, etc. I thought this video was very interesting.

"I'll sleep when I'm dead." -- Warren Zevon

I felt old at 58 because I could no longer fudge and say I was 39 (hex). 3A doesn’t work, too obviously not decimal!

Looking forward (a little) to 64 so I can say I'm 40 (hex)!

Silly, I know, a curse of being a computer programmer with a sense of humor. I also remember whenever I shampoo not to read the directions so I don't get stuck in the shower.

You know you are old when you can screw up your knee just getting off a stepstool too quickly, and it takes six weeks to stop limping, and all the while the pain site migrates around as you adjust your gait to favor different muscles and tendons that happen to hurt the least for the time being, until they too get sore and you adjust your gait again.

That's my life recently, and no, I didn't see a doctor, I thought I just twanged a tendon, I could still get around and even still push-mow my lawn, and my life could not tolerate surgery and recovery anyway (knowing full well what that would entail as my daughter did have knee surgery in November). But I may have to go see one after all if this keeps up, maybe I can get a cortisone shot or something...

You also know you're old when you feel no compunction about complaining publicly about your physical ailments! However, I do realize that tons of folks deal with much worse.

Still, to think one goofy misstep can cause this much aggravation. I hope I can still pass the "old man test" I posted about before come my next birthday!

Parkour!! Park bench, more like!

Good news, fellow codgers! I learned of yet another "old man" test that is a little easier to pass:

Just stand on one leg for 30 seconds, keeping your balance, no hands or leaning against things allowed. That's it! Heck, I can even do that on my leg with the still-aggravated knee.

Especially if they waste their money on "homeopathic" products, which are completely useless and a total scam!

I hope everyone here knows this. "Homeopathic" doesn't mean organic or natural, it means products based on the ridiculous premise that water has some sort of "memory" and that diluting a solution multiple times can somehow make the supposed "active ingredient" even more effective! It's all garbage and should not even be allowed in pharmacies.

Too late! My daughter already bought me one as a gift!

But not for any of those bogus reasons. We both just think it looks cool!

So I take it you're not going to want to get a chip implanted when they introduce that?

I wondered, I looked it up, I LOLed:

1974 also had "Lovin' You" by Minnie Ripperton. Egads.

The doll censors? What doll censors?

Did you not know you can yank on the top of the towel to have it spit out a fresh section of towel?

And it's a green solution, the used up towel is laundered and reused.

It is odd how some folks will get all bent out of shape over a few harmless PPB of glyphosate, then turn around and willingly imbibe in alcohol, a well known carcinogen, with beverages containing anywhere from 50 million to 500 million PPB or more!

Still, as carcinogens go, it's hardly the worst thing you can do to yourself, medically speaking. It does cause some cancers,
https://www.aicr.org/resources/blog/study-daily-alcohol-drink-shortens-life-and-ups-cancer-death-risk,

while seemingly reducing other causes of death enough that: "Numerous studies have shown that moderate and even heavy (up to 4 to 6 drinks per day) drinking lowers overall mortality. Here is a recent, often cited, one:" http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/34/1/199.full

Something is gonna get everyone eventually!

Yeah, the Google suggestion where I learned of Loring's passing claimed she was the last one alive, and I'm like "when did Astin die?" Then I was happy to find that his death would be news to him, and that my memory wasn't that bad!

You know you are old when the algorithm feeds you ads for nothing but denture cream, fiber supplements, hearing aids, adult diapers and preplanned funerals.

Yeah, for me, watching TVLand and the like without TiVo is pure hell! But I hate commercials in general, so I TiVo everything, even football.

Drives me nuts, all these "free" content streaming services popping up with stuff I would watch but cannot record to TiVo for zapping purposes. It's like being transported back to 1998 in a way. I am tempted to try recording to VHS again!

I think ads are to blame for most of what's wrong these days, and Idiocracy is looking more and more like a documentary!

Lawrence Welk show classic:

You know you are old when not only do you still use DVDs, but you return one to the library, not realizing the disc is still in your DVD player!

I see lots of people who are no older than me, who LOOK a lot older.

I guess I have just paced myself better than they did. Not ever smoking cigarettes surely was a factor.

But I don’t want to get too glib; this age estimator site friggin nails it:

https://howolddoyoulook.com/

I definitely remember crawling under my 1963 Impala in the dead of winter, on our frozen gravel driveway, to swap out the starter.

I have other stories about that car, maybe I'll add them to the Memories thread eventually.

I was taught Roman numerals back in the 70s, fat lot of good it did me. I knew Benjamins were called C notes, but I never connected those particular dots, and was never curious enough about that idiom to look it up. Now all I can say is, duh!

Still, no one says V notes, X notes, or L notes, so maybe I'm being a little hard on myself.

I always wondered whether Cat/Yusuf/Cat was bothered by the fact that his other biggest hit was a cover of a Sam Cooke song. Both Morning Has Broken and Another Saturday Night peaked at number 6, and now you tell me he didn't write the other one either? Ooh, burn!

Or how aspirin could counteract whatever a jammer is!

My first guess was another word for Boom Box but my daughter has never heard of that, so I don't think it's an age thing. Maybe it's regional?

I choose to take that revelation as proof I'm not really old, since I haven't hung out with enough old people to pick up any slang terms for heart attack!