I'm so old that

Ah, yes, the manual choke. How could I forget that one? Or perfecting how to drift to the side of the road when the warmed-up engine died so as to pull the top off the carburetor and unstick said choke. Or the shocked looks on men’s faces as they tried to come to terms with the fact that the woman knew what was wrong and how to fix it, and did not, in fact, need rescuing.

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…so old that I can remember when the Wizard of Yendor was a wimp.

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“The Earth’s a big blue marble when you see it from out there…”

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I remember hearing that my school was going to get computers the next year, so during the summer I got a book about them from the library and typed out some of the program listings on a typewriter so that I would have them to try out on the computer once school started. Turned out they were in a different dialect of BASIC than the Apple ][ used (maybe some TRS-80 or C64 dialects), but after some trial and error I got some of them working. The teacher seemed confused that I wasn’t just playing Oregon Trail, but didn’t stop me.

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Oh you’re old! Ha ha ha! checks drivers license… Shit.

I did my college applications on a manual typewriter.
When I got my bike with gears, it was tension shifting. And that was pretty fancy.
Lights on a bike?
Manual preset buttons on the car radio. Tune in your station with the twisty knob, pull the button out and push it all the way in. So good you’d have to reset them every few months.
The president was in office because he got famous on the screen for second rate “acting”. It’s good that doesn’t happen anymore.
Radio shack was still in business, and a good place to go.
I never did one, but air raid drills. Wouldn’t have done me any good, I grew up on SAC bases. But we knew what it was.

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I’m so old that I’m late to my mid-life crisis (like everything else).

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I remember when MTV came on. And it was just that: music television.

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I was in a bar called “Joe’s” when “Video Killed the Radio Star” came on for the first time. Here’s useless trivia for you: the singer and keyboardist for The Buggles (which, IIRC, constituted the entire band) went on to replace Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman in Yes during the recording of Drama. My wife says I am an endless font of useless info!

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… I remember helping my mom, a teacher, run the ditto machine
… I remember playing with the punch-card machine at my dad’s work (and playing that really cool star trek game on the mainframe)
… my first concert was a David Cassidy concert (granted, I was like 5)

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I’m so old that this was my first LP; so obscure I have only met one other person who has ever heard it.
I know my parents loved me as neither of them were deaf and yet they never threw it out…

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Oh my god, some of it is on YouTube!
I’m so old I’m still surprised by this…

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I’m so old that this was my first album.

And I played it on one of these.

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My first album:

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My sister and I shared a second-hand vacuum-tube Magnavox, like this one (couldn’t find a higher-resolution shot), until we were old enough to use the good stereo:

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My first album.

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And Hans Zimmer (of film soundtrack infamy) was a band member during that time and was in the video.

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I had a similar looking player, but I threw out all the moving parts and taped a lead to paperclips shoved into two of the DIN plug holes and used it as an overdrive/pre-amp for my guitar.
Until it caught fire.

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Wow, that’s delux! My first record player had an AM radio, too:

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Did anyone else at least seriously contemplate the financial benefits of selling Grit if not actually sellling?

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Bad week to be middle-aged.

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Sigh…I turn 52 on Thursday.

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