A definite sign that you're getting old.

[Valandil]

Originally Posted by Alcuin

1. I eat my vegetables first, and often take seconds if I can.
2. In high school, we all used slide rules for a couple of years before (expensive!) hand-held calculators became available.
   • We couldn’t use calculators on competitive tests: only slide rules.
3. Math teachers actually graded homework and tests by hand rather than using multiple-choice sheets they run through an automatic counting machine like so many voter ballots.
   • We all learned from our mistakes.
   • Some of us really learned math rather than becoming innumerate, easily brainwashed NPCs.
4. I remember when the people who ran Western countries were actually proud of their countries and tried to make them better and stronger. The British were proud of Britain; Americans of America; Canadians of Canada; Australians of Australia; and so on, rather than constantly declaring how ashamed they are of their own countrymen and doing their best to ruin their economies and their societies.
5. I remember when American national holidays actually occurred on the holiday rather than on the nearest Monday.
6. I remember when graduating medical students swore the Hippocratic Oath, including the (now considered in)famous line,Anyone who broke his oath lost his medical license.
7. I remember when it was legal to smoke tobacco in the office and illegal to smoke marijuana anywhere.
8. I remember when “journalists” actually reported what had happened instead of whatever they made up out of whole cloth.
9. I remember when Google was still a reliable search engine that didn’t skew results according to the whims of a gaggle of loud-mouthed louts and busybodies who insist on telling everyone else how to think.
10. I remember when the main stream media warned we were about to enter an ice age.
    • Winooski, Vermont, was so alarmed that it petitioned Congress to build a dome over the entire town. The rest of the country thought they were nuts, and it became something of a running joke. Not long after, the global warming scare began.
11. I was in college when the first, animated Hobbit movie was released by Rankin/Bass.
    
12. I remember when conservative college administrators tried to reign in Marxist students rioting on campus rather than Marxist college administrators stirring up riots to terrorize conservative students.
13. I bought a copy of The Silmarillion the year it was published.
14. I first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in 1973, finishing LotR right about the time JRR Tolkien died.
15. I remember when adults (my parents’ age and older) thought Tolkien’s work was “satanic” and refused to even consider that it might have been informed by Christian or (gasp!) Catholic belief.

That’s enough for now. We walked to school in the burning heat, knee-deep in snow, uphill both ways, avoiding saber-toothed tigers, and had 30 minutes for lunch when we had to capture, kill, skin, and cook our own mastodons, then defend them from scavenging tyrannosaurus rexes in order to eat them before the bell rang.

What a childhood!

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Valandil

What a childhood!

Teenage years, mostly. Maybe my childhood isn't over, or my second childhood has arrived.