Fun_People Archive
26 Sep
Stop the timeline, I want to get off

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 97 12:39:26 -0700
To: Fun_People
Subject: Stop the timeline, I want to get off

Forwarded-by: elshaw@MIT.EDU (Libby Shaw)
Forwarded-by: rgl@crl.com
Forwarded-by: owner-bruhaha@goonsquad.spies.com

The people who are starting college this fall across the nation were
born in 1980.

Consider this:

The Iranian hostage crisis occurred before they were conceived.

They have no memory of a time before MTV.

"New Wave" is their PARENTS musical generation.

Cyndi Lauper, Boy George, the Pretenders, the Kinks, and the Sex
Pistols are all old music they have heard of, if they have heard of
it at all.

They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era.

They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was waged.

If they have heard the name "Oliver North," it was probably as a
losing Congessional candidate, or perhaps in some obscure survey
history text's reference, such as might be made to Huey Long or
Teapot Dome.

Black Monday 1987 is as significant to them as the Great Depression.

Their world has always included AIDS.

Having not lived through the Disco Scare, they can romanticize the
1970s.

They see "Family Ties" as something middle aged ladies watch.

They watched "Star Wars" years ago, when they were kids -- on video.

Atari predates them, as do vinyl albums and cassette audiotapes.

>From their earliest years, a camera was something you used once and
threw away.

As far as they know, stamps have always cost about 32 cents.

The oil crisis is history of which they probably know nothing -- and
why anyone WOULDN'T buy a Suburban is beyond them.

Most of them have probably never seen a real nun, even if they went
to Catholic schools.

[If you tell them the joke about the kid pulling a CD out of the cutout bin  
and saying "Wow! Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings!" they will give  
you a blank look and ask "What's 'Wings'?"  -psl]

© 1997 Peter Langston