Does anyone else reflect on 'Closer to Cleopatra than...' moments in their personal lives?

[Thurien]

We are told we are closer in time to Cleopatra today than when the first pyramids were built. Then there is Tyrannosaurus Rex which we are closer to than Stegosaurus.

Interesting enough, but what blows my mind more is time distances in my own life. Today I took a detour through the village where I was born and where I returned to live with my young family. There, one of the DC's and I sat on a small hill by the wood's edge and watched young squirrels playing. DC was about 3 and shreiking with joy as they gambled about.

As I drove through today, I reflected that my own early years seemed like a whole eternity before DC came along. It was really like a different life. Yet from the squirrels to now seems like just a decade or two, but still very much connected to now.

Anyone else get these type of thoughts?

I am now older than my grandmother was when I was born... always blows my mind (I'm 44 and nan is still here ♥ )

I was watching the election coverage and they said something about Keir being "the first Labour leader to become PM from opposition for almost three decades".... I said "Well that's wrong- what about Blair? ".... and then it dawned on me. 27 years. 3 decades. Where did that go?

We were having dinner with friends when they said, do you mind if we switch the TV on? Just heard something on the radio about the Berlin Wall.
It was coming down! Completely unexpected. We ate our fancy dinner on our laps watching TV.
I’d swear in court that was only about 10 years ago! 😁

Another one - when I was little, first world war vererans were in their 80s/90s and there were quite a few of them about. Now there are vanishingly few people left who were kids in 1918, let alone veterans 😔 the youngest people alive today who experienced the first world war - who were born in its final year - are 106.

Second world war veterans, now approaching 100, are to my DC what first world war veterans were to me - passing out of living memory and into history.

I have found my people...!!

I cannot recall who it is, but I read recently of an actor (I think) whose father was also famous (may not be an actor) who was born around 1860 or so. Clearly he had his son late, but even so an 80 year old today saying their father was old enough to have fought at Rorke's Drift or was over 40 when the Wright Brothers first flew, stops me in my tracks.

I always have thoughts like this!
My 70s and 89s childhood/ teenage years were closer to the Second World War than Charles and Diana’s wedding/ The Falklands War/ Miners Strike etc are to us today .

This is off tangent, but perhaps along the same lines. At the Bruce Springsteen concert in Wembley a couple of weeks ago, I was looking at all the old codgers wondering how they could possibly like the same music as me when I'm so much younger than them. I'm 69. Definitely an old codger. As is The Boss himself!

Typo
80s teenage years I meant

Helen Viola Jackson was the last surviving widow of a confederate soldier from the American Civil War . She only died in 2020 , 155 years after the end of the war. She was 17 when she married , her civil war veteran husband was 93 !!

Omg I just thought when you're 50 you're (probably!) closer to your own death than your birth

I was watching an old episode of the comedy 'Hi de Hi' set in a holiday camp in 1959-60. I watched it first time round back in 1981, when everyone saw it as a vintage, nostalgic piece; ooh, look at those 50s dresses and old-fashioned cars etc.

It occurred to me that watching the first time round in 1981 would be like me watching a comedy now that was set in the early 2000s!

I went to someone’s house wearing a jacket I used to wear at uni which I had found in a cupboard. Their 19yo son popped in and said hello. He’s a proper man sized grownup with tattoos. I realised he is younger than my jacket!

How is it that my childhood went on for eons and yet my kids went from being born to adults in the blink of an eye? And now I look in the mirror and am an old crock?

I still have such strong memories of my schoolday years and yet I started primary school over 50 years ago!!!

I took a student to a care home recently, and he was wondering if they would be playing R&B and grunge in years to come

I have been working longer than some of my colleagues have been alive 😢

@Timefordrama, I know what you mean. I have a tee shirt that says "Its strange being the same age as all these old people."

I'm 74, so if course in old, but in my head? Not so much.

I read this nodding away thinking I too started uni 20 years ago. Then I realised it was actually 30 years ago. Feels like 20. The 90's seem like 20 years ago.

For me it’s thinking about who I am older than in time

I first realised it when I turned older than princess Diana was when she died and now I’m nearly older than Elvis

The thing that freaks me out is thinking back to my parents when they were my age. I'm the same age now as my Dad was when I was in my first year at university, but somehow I feel he must have been older.

I was there too and Bruce is a law unto himself - if you told me he was 50 I’d believe you! I’m not 40 yet and I was knackered just watching him leaping about.

was my first time seeing him - wasn’t it great?!! 🎸

Another one - when I turned 36 and realised I was older than my grandfather was when he died (he had a rare form of cancer which was untreatable back in the 60s) so bizarre!

user1471453601 · Today 18:59
, I know what you mean. I have a tee shirt that says "Its strange being the same age as all these old people."
**
I'm 74, so if course in old, but in my head? Not so much

See, I don’t think you are. I’m 60. Still a spring chicken. Fully expect to receive my telegram.

I always think this. When I was a child in the mid-80s I can remember my Mum listening to the “Golden Oldies” shows on the radio. Those songs would only have been about 10-20 years old at the time. If they still had golden oldies now, it’d be songs from 2000-2010.

I’ve just realised that my sister is the same age my mother was when my father died. Somehow I thought my mother was an old woman at 61.

I took a student to a care home recently, and he was wondering if they would be playing R&B and grunge in years to come
Im my DM's care home they are usually playing stuff from Queen, Michael Jackson era. The staff say that is much more requested than music from the 50's and 60's. There was a brilliant soul singer last week. Before my DM entered care, I assumed it would be George Formby, Vera Lynn type stuff but old people aren't that old anymore!