Tag Archives: aging

Nostalgia

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So I was walking across campus a while ago and I passed by a truck parked in front of one of the academic buildings, the back of the truck was wide open, and the truck was filled with thousands and thousands of dollars of new, in-the-box computers and peripherals. There was no one around anywhere that I could see who looked like they were associated with the truck, no driver, no delivery person, no campus rep, no one.

For the first time in years I thought of an old saying that I heard a lot when I was growing up, mostly on TV or in movies:

    It fell off the back of a truck.

I chuckled, thinking about just how funny and vernacular the line is, getting this visual of a wise guy bringing home a new TV or something for his wife, telling her that he didn’t spend any of their very limited money on it, that it fell off the back of a truck.

And then I walked past a student who was easily young enough to be my kid if I’d gotten started as a parent in my 20s, and I wondered how many students like him on this campus know the meaning of it fell off the back of a truck?

Do you, whomever is reading this right now, know what it actually means?


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Father Time is a sadistic bastard

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It seems that at just about every turn these days Father Time is rubbing it in my face that I’m getting old.

Consider the following list of recent reminders that I turned 45 in August:

  • A friend emailed me to report that he’s hearing late-era songs by The Who, Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and U2 on an Oldies radio station in New York. (These stations were like the soundtrack to the movie American Graffiti when I was growing up. I don’t know what’s worse, that Oldies stations have changed or that my friend listens to Oldies stations.)
  • As I wrote last week, I just attended an actual U2 concert, but what I didn’t say then was that I could not believe how many old-looking people were there. (I reassured myself that I looked much better, much younger, than my peers, but am I just in denial?)
  • At the very same U2 concert, the opening act was the Black Eyed Peas, a hip-hop group that appeared to be enormously popular, judging by the crowd’s reaction, judging by their singing along and screaming out their approval. Black Eyed Peas has been together nearly a decade and a half, they’re internationally famous, they’ve sold millions and millions of records… and I didn’t know one song.
  • Yesterday I read in the New York Times that a Broadway revival of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs closed after only one week, shocking the playwright and critics who gave it good reviews. The article contains this quote: “To that end, if ticket sales before the critics’ reviews were any measure, Mr. Simon struck many people as passé.” (I watched the TV show The Odd Couple, based on Simon’s play and movie, religiously in reruns when I was growing up, and I loved his autobiographical stage and film trilogy of Brighton Beach, Biloxi Blues, and Broadway Bound. And now it’s passé. Oy.)
  • I work at a university and have a 12-year old son, meaning that, on a daily basis, I am reminded about just how little I know concerning the latest music, fashions, TV shows, movies, video games, lingo, behaviors, etc.

My new goal is to live long enough to hear Death Cab For Cutie on an Oldies radio station.