Moments that make you realise you’ve grown ho

[Soubriquet]

When Ariel says “but daddy I love him!” And you find yourself agreeing with King Tritan

You’re 16 Ariel and you don’t even know him!

Getting down the stairs. Every. Morning.

Saying to the dcs "turn the light off, it's like Blackpool illuminations in here!"

Explaining what a phone box is to the kids at school.

My children are unable to comprehend how we managed our social lives without mobile phones.

@NothingIsWrong

My children are unable to comprehend how we managed our social lives without mobile phones.

I some ways I preferred it, you have to make definite plans in advance and people turned up on time.

I love explaining dial up to teens. Their reactions are hilarious

At uni (as a mature student)I had to Explain the millennium dome to the rest of the group.

People! never, ever say "in my day....." It immediately causes jowls and wrinkles to appear, and your mouth to set in a grim line. Fact!

'Back in the day' is acceptable and less disapproving sounding, somehow.

My 8 year old asked me what version iPhone I had when I was his age.

I ‘tape’ things to watch later and my teens laugh at me every single time.

But that’s just stuff that makes me feel old.

I feel like a grown up when I read a recipe and know I have all the ingredients in stock. Or when I remember to send a form back before the deadline.

When you wrap up warm without anyone else telling you to.

(Though by this measure dh still isn’t properly grown up.)

My DD asking me "What's that" when she saw a public call phone at Bluewater . Wall mounted with a hanset and phone cable an' all What kind of Museum Piece is this ?

In her defence she thought it was a Defibrilator ( education not totally wasted there)

I tell her about PhoneBoxes .
The red ones , concrete floors usually under 3" of fluid that you hope is rain but most likely piss so you stand on the sticky out bit of the lowest window edge .
The reciever was always wet with condensation from someones breath and smelled of ciggies'n'coffee
The (in the old days) 2p and 10p slot were often glued shut or a stuck coin.

Then you got phone cards - they were green , credit card sized with £1/£2/£5/£10 credit .

When you start complaining that most modern music is "just noise". I always used to hear people say this and I've found myself doing the same since the ripe age of 30.

[b]When all the main stars in new films are way too young for you to fancy.[/b]

Oh yes! "How could someone fancy him? He looks like a child".

When I found out what my first crush looks like now.

I’m definitely not old by any means—but, earlier my 8yo DB and I were watching the lion the witch and the wardrobe, I was saying to him “when I was your age this was my favourite movie”. Certainly makes me feel old when watching movies from my childhood with him!

@Dicotyledon

I like asking youngsters nearly everyone in my office if they know what the USSR was. My favourite answer Is it in the USA?

Quite a few of us now know what it is! It’s taught in gcse history these days

Rewatched the Gilmore girls and saw the grandmothers pov so much more.

Rewatched the Gilmore girls and saw the grandmothers pov so much more.

Omg yes! The more you rewatch Gilmore Girls the more you realise that Lorelei is a terrible parent, which is completely not how you see it, first time round.

Oh yes! "How could someone fancy him? He looks like a child".

The most recent adaptations of Vanity Fair and Little Women were exactly like this.

Vanity Fair they all looked like 6th Formers, Timothee Chalamet as Laurie in LW was basically a schoolboy

I watched an episode of Bewitched with the dc and found myself fully in sympathy with Endora.

Yes to seeing your school crush . Why do they have gray hair and wrinkles?

Chatting to the 18yo work experience lad I found out we'd gone to the same Uni.
I started talking about certain bars and asked if he knew them (he didn't which I thought was strange) and said it was a wonder we hadn't crossed paths as I lived in same part of the city while there.

I then realised I was 40 and he was born the year I left

@Spied

Chatting to the 18yo work experience lad I found out we'd gone to the same Uni. I started talking about certain bars and asked if he knew them (he didn't which I thought was strange) and said it was a wonder we hadn't crossed paths as I lived in same part of the city while there.

I then realised I was 40 and he was born the year I left

This one is my favourite .

Doing home learning with my 6yo, she was struggling to understand part of a history lesson set by the teacher, when I suddenly realised she had no idea what a camera was. She has only ever known it to be part of a mobile phone, it's not even in her frame of reference. This Victorian era man standing by a tripod with a cloth on his head may as well have landed from another planet, to her!

Also, when she was in reception, realising that I had started work before her teacher was born. That was depressing.

More recently, realising that lockdown hasn't actually affected me that much, as we are old and have very little social life anyway

My dad used to tell me how he would book a 'trunk call' from his home country for a particular phone box back in the 70s,and how he'd have to hang around it for the alloted hour and gently encourage people not to be too long placing their calls please as he was waiting to hear from his mum.

He now has 3 mobiles and can call anyone in the world anytime he damn well pleases. He (and I) are torn between amazement and reverence (with a touch of terror) at just how far tech has come in one lifetime.

For me, it was explaining to the DC in a charity shop that first you had records, then tapes, then CDs, then MP3 players, and now finally you can just play everything on your phone whenever you want. That blew my mind!

@42andcounting I remember in childhood not quite making the connection between a camera being used, and the resulting photo. I thought photos in albums "just happened". All I knew was that we had to stand and smile when someone used a camera, and possibly be dazzled by the flash. When my teacher used a Polaroid camera, and you saw the photo straight away, that made much more sense. Mind you, lots of teenagers now would be amazed to see one of those.

@ContessaferJones I've just had to look up what a "trunk call" was. Did they really have to be booked? "Trunk" is a funny word when it doesn't mean part of an elephant, or a tree trunk. It has lots of old-fashioned uses, such as a trunk for luggage (although perhaps Harry Potter has made this more well-known), trunk road, and when "trunk" means the upper body.

@teaandcustardcreamsx With the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, were you referring to the BBC serial of it from the 1980s, or was there an earlier movie?

See the picture for more old photo technology: who remembers those, and having to put the slides (transparencies if you were posh) in upside down, and the right way round? It was really weird if you got that wrong, and you saw a photo of a familiar place being reversed like that. My grandmother, a keen photographer, did not use printed photos at all: she only ever used slides. She had a slide projector and screen, and also a much smaller tabletop device for looking at slides.

A 20yo colleague was showing off their new Adidas track top and I said, ‘I had that jacket in the 90s’. I felt ancient and I’m only ten years older than him

When I went round the house proclaiming "what are all these lights doing on?"

I am now my mother.