What do you remember that shows your age?

I had a Fireball XL5 Lunch Box for school.

Captain Scarlet on Channel 5 in Brooklyn or was it Channel 11 (WPIX).

Chuck McCann Show (Chuck probably most famous for those Right Guard commercials)

Of course when you get old you run the risk of having already mentioned something before or not remembering if it was already mentioned. And just toooo tried to look.

I was playing a little memory game with my lil sister, she’s about 10 years younger than I am, trying to see what I remember that she doesn’t. 10 years is a bit of a gap and a lot o the household stuff she does remember… Except there were some events

The end of the Berlin Wall
There was a huge oil spill in Alaska, Exxon
A deep terror of AID/HIV was developing, daily talks about it, in the news all the time
Congress freaking out about Mortal Kombat
The whole animal shift, pushing against furs, no ivory
It feels silly saying it but i watched the first episodes of the Simpsons, when it aired… which has been going on forever.

As a kid a lot of my memories are around household things like modems, lip phones, 50 foot phone cords and the arrival of SNES and Game Boy but when people mention these world type events, I really can say, yeah i remember stuff about that.

Do you remember the newspaper strike? McCann would read the comics dressed in character. His Little Orphan Annie still cracks me up.
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I’m old, but not quite old enough to remember the wall being built. However, I do remember when this photo of an East German soldier escaping to West Berlin was big news:

german

Oh wow. I didn’t know. You know what this reminds me of, when the North Korean soldiers escaped recently. That might be in a do you remember sort of thing decades from now, especially if the war actually officially ends at some point.

Yeah, this! I think you and I are pretty close to the same age. When the Simpsons started in late 1989, Bart was a 10 year old 4th grader. I identified with that, even though I was a whole year older! Homer, the dad, seemed impossibly old. I think he was 34. I am way older than Homer now. And that feels weird.

Though I haven’t really watched the show since the early 2000s. There’s probably more episodes that I’ve never seen than episodes I saw and adored.

Apparently we are! Yeah Homer and Marge, like all the adults in that seemed pretty darn old. I have no idea what age they were meant to be. They were just “adults.”

I stopped watching at some point too. I can’t remember when. I watched it all the way through King of the Hill… I left Fox as a network some time ago. I don’t think I watch any of their shows now, and they went heavy Reality TV.

Oh that’s another thing. I was alive when that term suddenly meant something and everyone was talking about the death of paid actors. Why pay someone millions when you can get people with jobs in a house for months on end and pay only one of them some sort of prize?

Aka, Big Brother and I think it was only online at he start.

When I was little, there was only one Legoland, and it was in Denmark.

Kids are spoiled today.

Speaking of “impossibly old”, Arnold’s father… was 41 at the start of the show (1988)

The stinging disappointment when Sonny Fox was replaced by Bob McAllister was my first taste that stuff on television didn’t stay the same forever.

I remember watching The Simpsons when it was a series of short clips on the Tracey Ullman Show.

That was around the time Fox bought the channel (channel 5 in NYC, 1987) and brought all this original programming.

It was like Netflix with the crazy amount of new shows popping up. It was incredible to have all these options, especially if you didn’t have cable. There were a ton of comedies, I don’t even remember half the shows that were on. I vaguely remember one about a werewolf which was pretty good (to my teen self), and of course, Married With Children, 21 Jump Street, America’s Most Wanted, X-files (later on). Before then, this channel just showed old reruns and news programs.

I remember that, but I don’t think my parents allowed me to watch that show and it might have been shown too late too. I can’t remember what time it ran but I did have a, uhh, bed time. Aaw the days when you watched a show when it aired and it was a treat to stay up late to watch something with your parents.

Don’t forget Herman’s Head! Right? Herman’s Head? Anybody?

A man after my own heart.

Herman’s Head! The girl who was his secretary on that show went on to do voices in the Simpsons (she voiced Lisa SImpson).

I remember watching a BBC TV show (one of the THREE TV stations) showing what a ‘silicon chip’ was. I also remember them showing what a ‘compact disc’ was, and how it would work.

Also Nelson mandelas release, berlin wall coming down, collapse of soviet union, blah blah.

The QEII is no longer sailing, but years ago I did go on a cruise (to norway) on it with an elderly relative. The first night, we dined in the ‘fairly posh’ restaurant (not the captains one, which required tuxedos. A woman on the next table to us was wearing a tiara without any irony. You can bet your ass that a jacket and tie was required.
Cakes also served at afternoon tea from your left, on pain of (presumably) death.

The Queen Mary 2 is the Atlantic Crossing flagship these days. They ask for at least sport coats in the main restaurant for dinner. Ties welcome, dinner dress probably not. Likewise the more gourmet restaurant. Not sure about the restaurants attached to the more expensive cabins. I like to think they’re all in black tie up there, but it seems unlikely.

So now I’ve got a third reason not to take a cruise, right behind norovirus and being trapped on a floating prison with several hundred other people.