Top 10 Things I Never Thought I’d Say to Teens When I Got This Old That I Actually Catch Myself Saying to Teens Now That I Am This Old:
- When I was your age… followed by something really corny or inappropriate that further accentuates my old age.
- We didn’t have cell phones (when I was your age). We had to keep a spare quarter in our shoe in case there was an emergency and we had to use a pay phone!
- (When I was your age) We didn’t have email or IM. We wrote notes, folded into fancy shapes.
- Why would you wear that? Aren’t you cold?
- You call this poppy crap music?
- When I graduated high school, you weren’t even a good idea yet.
- You’re young! Enjoy it while it lasts! It’s all downhill from here! Or some variation on the youth/downhill theme…
- I wish I could eat like that and stay skinny.
- I have nail polish / underwear / concert ticket stubs older than you.
- Um, yes, I am the author of that book.
(Okay, I kind of like saying that one!)
And to round out tonight’s theme, I’d like to send a heartfelt note of thanks to my dear OLD friend Amy DWP.
It takes a special kind of friend to notice, point out, and call special attention to each and every one of someone’s gray hairs, and tonight, you did that for me. They (and I) felt quite honored!
Especially considering that when I was your age, we didn’t have gray hair. We had Sun-In! And Aqua Net! Check out the lift on those bangs!
Well now you’ve got me all nostalgic, so…
Top 10 Things That Were Cool When I Was Your Age
- Rolling, safety pinning, or some other creative method for tapering the cuffs one’s jeans. Anything that didn’t cut off ankle circulation was considered bell-bottomed and therefore banned. Boot cut? We would have ostracized you!
- Big, immovable, indestructible bangs of steel (um, see photo above).
- Walkmans. That’s right. We didn’t have iPods when I was your age. If we wanted new music, we had to save up $8.99 to buy a cassette tape at the mall.
- Making mix tapes, either by dubbing cassettes (for those of us lucky enough to have a double cassette deck) or by holding the recorder right up to the stereo.
- Sissy tests, in which you let someone scratch the back of your hand rapidly and repeatedly until you pulled away. The longer you could stand it, the less of a sissy you were. If you didn’t have bleeding gashes on your hands, you were a loser. I made my own to avoid the test (some call it sissy, I call it genius) and told my parents an elaborate tale about slipping on the parallel bars in gym. That should have been a dead giveaway, considering I never did anything strenuous in gym, especially anything that had the potential to mess up those bangs.
- Writing out all of the lyrics to songs so we could sing along.
- Getting super creative with writing notes to girlfriends, like in code, colors, or with a really cool fold that no one had ever seen before.
- Going stag to dances in big groups of girls. We had to go stag. Getting too close to the guys was a bad idea — we could kill someone with those bangs of ours! (Well, okay, maybe going stag was just my personal fad, since I never had a steady [or presentable in public] boyfriend.)
- Hair scrunchies, often more than one at a time.
- Cootie catchers, aka fortune tellers, in which you write little clues on paper and fold it up into this little thingy and… well, check out the explanation here if you really want to know.
And now I want to know… for all the readers over 18, what was cool when YOU were a teen?
Posted by Sarah Ockler 
