<p>I made a rare, brief foray into the College Confidential Cafe today and stumbled into this thread <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-confidential-cafe/457015-ted-kennedy-has-killed-woman.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-confidential-cafe/457015-ted-kennedy-has-killed-woman.html</a> I was fascinated to see that about half of the posters had never heard of Mary Jo Kopechne and the Ted Kennedy/Chappaquiddick episode. Boy do I feel old. I am not meaning for this thread to become a political discussion (as the one in the CC cafe has) but rather to comment on the generation gap I am feeling. It reminded me of a conversation I had with someone recently about their brother having had the unlucky birthday (Sept. 14) to be #1 in the draft lottery. Anyone else here remember sitting anxiously watching the draft lottery? Anyone else have interesting generation gap anecdotes? (Sidebar: The painter at my house today laughed hystericalaly at the VCR we still had set up in the guest bedroom…) Pass the Geritol, please.</p>
<p>I need a Betacorder. I was 160.</p>
<p>Kids today…</p>
<p>My daughter and her friends are fascinated by the concepts of computers as big as trucks, having to watch a tv program <em>only</em> when it is being broadcast, and the slowness of information sharing prior to the 'net.</p>
<p>I was talking to a co-worker a while back. Younger than me, yes; but I still considered her a peer. This was a striking twenty-something woman and that particular day, she was wearing a black turtleneck, dark gray short straight skirt, black tights and heels; dark black eyeliner and her very long hair straight down. I remarked that she was sporting her Beatnik look that day.</p>
<p>Her response: “What is a Beatnik?”</p>
<p>My nephew found it hard to believe when I told him–just last week–about how I was lucky enough to have a keyboard gizmo that plugged into my television set when I took a programming course; that way, I didn’t have to go over to the computer center at night like everyone else.</p>
<p>And don’t even try to explain about “punch cards”.</p>
<p>A year or so ago I was watching the old Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy movie “Desk Set”, and my kids were ROFL over the size, lights, and sounds of the computer, wondering where was the display.</p>
<p>Okay, here’s the question. What was the OTHER story in the newspaper the day the news about Chappaquidick broke?</p>
<p>I have a newspaper from that day: I was looking at the headline story recently and noticed that there was one other story on the front page. Chappaquidick is buried–bottom left, where the page designer (who happened to be my father) put it, realizing that the other story needed the whole page. Almost.</p>
<p>The other story: the first walk on the Moon.</p>
<p>I have a phone with a dial, green, in the front room. My son’s friends used to ask me how it worked…and then a real record player and a collection of LPs. </p>
<p>It reminds me of the Jack Kennedy 45 I had, the theme song for the campaign in 1960 by Frank Sinatra “He’s got high hopes.” Been there, done that, volunteered for the country and then watched several assassinations in disbelief…friends killed as well. Sorry but the Reagan years were bad frosting at the end of the line. And it seemed that everyone just wanted some change from too much change. And you know, now we have roads chock-a-block with SUVs and very few remember anything. I am dubious that songs and speeches can bring much good. I am hoping that the lady who is running who does remember can gather up the forces to salvage a mess.</p>
<p>Remember having to wait for a payphone at the airport. Having the operator come on the line to ask you to please add more money. </p>
<p>Being so high-tech by converting LP’s to 8 Track with my 8 Track recorder. You could actually buy blank 8 Track tapes. </p>
<p>Changing my own oil and having to buy a new muffler. </p>
<p>Listening on the phone to other people talking on the party line. </p>
<p>Having to miss 11:00 mass on Superbowl Sunday because the game came on at 1:00 Eastern time. </p>
<p>Listening to the World Series on a transistor radio with an ear phone during school because all the World Series games were day games. </p>
<p>TV repairman coming to the house to change out tubes on the new color TV.</p>
<p>Attaching a plastic overlay to the TV to play the first pong games on the Magnavox game system, Odyssey. </p>
<p>Being so excited that my Dad had a HP calculator to play with. </p>
<p>Doing square roots by hand.</p>
<p>Oh, I just remembered… my daughter’s roommate couldn’t tell time using an analog clock! All she’d seen were digital clocks.</p>
<p>Very gappy stories: </p>
<p>S-2 came back from a rummage sale a few years ago. For $2, he’d bought a manual typewriter. He couldn’t believe how it worked, "Wow, Ma, look at this; every letter has a metal key; sometimes they get jammed. How the heck do you edit? (Swiping the return sweep…) Look at this crazy thing to start a new line. This ribbon thing is FILTHY! " He had no idea about the origins of the keyboard that grows out of his fingertips today.</p>
<p>Young adult musician came to our house for some music-- “you’ve got all this on VINYL?” Looked at us with mixed awe and pity.</p>
<p>S-1, age 25, recently told me his thoughts with Super Tuesday around the corner, “I’ve only known Presidents with two last names: Bush, Clinton, Bush…” (so he’s voting Obama in a few days).</p>
<p>Friend of D: “You had to tell lies just to get birth control?! How sad.”</p>
<p>H and I sometimes joke about having to walk all the way across a room to change a channel on a TV, just to get the kids crazy. </p>
<p>Serious one: I found the most impressive way to retell the days of watching for the draft lottery (remember it well) was that college professors never gave the boys an F, because that could be a death sentence for them if they flunked out, were drafted and sent to Vietnam. The professors were deep and genuine, with much academic integrity, but the boundary mark was exactly at that point. They didn’t flunk the boys out. The concept of non-volunteer army is very foreign to kids today; nor do they realize there was a college deferment for the draft. In Canada, 15 years ago I met a Vietnamese man who said he’d always wondered this about America: “How come the greatest country in the world had such ignorant people as soldiers?” Exploring what he meant by “ignorant” he really meant: not book-learned. So I explained the college deferment for the draft. For him it was an epiphany. “So, all of your intellectuals were back in the USA…” It had been cognitive dissonance for him. He was a “boat person” who escaped and eventually made his way to Canada, but formed his impression of Americans during his teenaged years in Vietnam.</p>
<p>The teenager Chappaquiddick thread does make me feel old!!! I’m very proud to say that my kids may have low SAT scores, but they all know exactly where the Dyke Bridge on Martha’s Vinyard is, as well as the bathroom at Graceland that Elvis died in, the tunnel in Paris that Diana died in, the exact square of pavement in front of the Dakota where John Lennon was shot…</p>
<p>My kids are shocked that my high school had a designated smoking lounge for the students. By the time I attended the school at least had the good taste to make it an outdoor area with benches, but in my older siblings’ day there was an actual room in the school with couches.</p>
<p>
Further back than that, trying to attach an early version of Saran Wrap to the TV, in order to draw the Secret Picture from the Winky Dink show (my mother was not about to spend good money sending away for the “real” “magic drawing screen”, ). BTW, my jerry-rigged version did not work. <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winky_Dink[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winky_Dink</a></p>
<p>Checking wikipedia, I find that a kit containing the screen and various Winky Dink crayons could be purchased for 50 cents. Hmmm, I don’t think you can buy a candy bar for that these days.</p>
<p>To continue on the Kennedy theme… My summer job last year sort of thrust me in with the rich and famous. At a cocktail party one evening, an old woman introduced herself to me. It was only once I got home that night that I realized that this lady I talked to, Ethel Kennedy, was Ethel Kennedy. The name just didn’t immediately ring a bell for me! </p>
<p>
That’s a very good point. Imagine Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton: thirty years from now, kids would have a very easy time memorizing the list of Presidents!</p>
<p>dmd77…
</p>
<p>wow! Same day? That is ironic, because I was going to mention that many kids today don’t believe that we actually put men on the moon. They think it was all a hoax.</p>
<p>It is pretty incredible that we made it to the Moon in the 1960’s. In 2004, the current President unveiled his vision for returning to the Moon by 2020. How inspiring. </p>
<p>I have a “state-of-the-art” IBM Selectric typewriter in the attic, purchased in 1981 for a then-whopping $1000. Also still have a “Super-Beta Max” VCR that my brother-in-law convinced me to buy (“technologically superior”, he said). Not to mention all the LPs we ever owned.</p>
<p>We don’t throw out much.</p>
<p>The walk on the moon was July 20-21 1969; Chappaquiddick was July 18, but it certainly could have been in the papers for the first time two days later; reporters used land lines (pay phones!) to communicate. I think television news did report live from the Vinyard but it was a major technological feat to do that in 1969.</p>
<p>I always liked the bumper sticker on VW Bugs that read:</p>
<p>“Teddy would be President if he had driven this car.”</p>
<p>Bugs float!!!</p>
<p>OK, here’s another one. When I was a small child, I remember a doctor making a house call when my father was sick.</p>
<p>muffy and dmd77,
I didn’t remember that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and Chappaquiddick occurred within a few days of each other! Ironically, I was up on Cape Cod with a friend and her family the day The lunar module landed. The Chappaquiddick incident would have been HUGE news on the Cape, but I really didn’t remember the timing being the same. That’s wild.
Sidebar: One of the funniest (real) answers I’ve heard to a psych.(IQ) test question: Question: Who was Louis Armstrong? Answer: The first black man to walk onthe moon!! :eek:</p>