Guest Post: Middle Age in a Digital Age

My aunt is hilarious. She should have her own blog to blog about her life. She's one of those that things just "happen" to. She also has a funny outlook on life so she can take any "happening" and make it into a funny story. Well, until she has her own blog, I am welcoming her here to guest post! Hopefully this will be the first of many times Mrs. G appears here on Suddenly Snowden!

Ramblings from one being dragged into middle age…

When I was growing up, we thought we were so much more together than previous generations.  We were groovy and cool. Our parents were, in fact, square.  We uttered such catchy phrases as “where’s the beef” and “Heeeeyyyyyyy”.  In fact, all of our phrases came from television and commercials.  We relied on the Fonz to show us how to be cool (Heeeyyyyy) and an old woman to bring us to the reality of burgers made the way we wanted them (where’s the beef?!?).  We made plans around our favorite shows, because we had to watch them when they aired.  Heaven forbid we went to school without knowing the latest drama on Dallas.  We couldn’t be out of the conversation loop about this gem.  And, ‘who shot JR’ consumed us for a whole summer!  We didn’t have anyone that gave us advanced information based on shows already shot (Reality Steve), and shows were not aired again and again in syndication. 

Here are some phrases I would never have considered to be part of my main stream conversation:

Text me – I don’t even know what I would have thought that meant 30 years ago.

Friend me – this is something we did on the playground, in person.

Unfriended them – this also is something we did on the playground, in person.

Did you pin it? – this would have referred to setting the hem on a new dress.

Tweeting – only on Halloween, in a Tweety bird costume.

Google it – what in the world is a google?  I didn’t know until it became a search engine.

Search Engine – WTH?

Shut up – we meant it literally.  And said it often.

OMG – I had enough trouble figuring out what ‘ING’ was when they began the advertisements.   Although, I would have appreciated this phrase as I got in a lot of trouble for always saying ‘Oh my God!’

Yahoo – uttered on ‘cowboy dress up’ day at school.

Totes – what my daddy did when I was too tired to walk.

Shoot me an email – we shot clay pigeons and the occasional squirrel.

My bad – this would have been a sentence fragment.  Minus 10 points.

Really – this was an honest to goodness question.

Seriously – this was always part of a sentence that usually involved getting in trouble.

The tribe has spoken – only on vacation in Cherokee, NC.

Set my GPS – we had to call and get verbal directions, or, even worse, read a map.

I have it DVR’d  - we had to actually watch commercials!  How inconvenient!

Let me check my phone – because it wasn’t working.

Let’s touch base – this had two meanings.  One involved playing baseball or softball, the other involved the back seat of a car.

Some things that are on television now that were not on when I was growing up:

•  Kids’ shows where the kids are the smart ones and parents are portrayed as stupid.  Check out any Disney channel show, the kids are always showing up the parents.  And parents wonder why their kids don’t respect or obey them.
• Viagra commercials.  I didn’t even know this was an issue until I was grown up and found out there was a drug for it.  In fact, I’m still too embarrassed to type it.  My children know what these drugs do.
• The president’s sex life – thanks to President Clinton, I now know what is sex and what is not really sex.  I’m still somewhat shocked that JFK slept with other women besides Jackie.
• KY Jelly commercials.  We had to learn about this from a friend’s older sister. Usually a college age older sister.  This is so embarrassing when watching television with your college age son.  I had a hard enough time with tampax commercials when I was a teenager.
• Shows where the dialog is very direct involving having sex, wanting to have sex, or thinking about having sex.  It seems that no one has any imagination anymore.  We knew what Richie Cunningham wanted when he sang “I found my thrill…..”  He didn’t have to say it crudely. And if we wanted to think he just meant getting to first base, that was okay too.