...you used to hate to hear people talk about old times?

I am not sure when or how it happened but I think I am now one of those old people with stories!!

My kids look like this sometimes, when I am speaking in old tongues to them.

They will adjust and someday they will tell old stories!

 

The one common factor in every story is the teller of the tale was always younger when the tale happened......hmmmmm....


Hotwater

 

You have to say that or they start to be able to say you are senile. When you were young you were either silly or brave or wise. Old is redundant.

 

soo i havent read every ones post here but well whever im in a grave yard.(not very often)..lol i look at all the grave stones and wonder who all these people were,what they were like and stuff...aww i loveee history..it makes me sad.happy and all the other emotions all rolled up into one..one time i was looking at a whole family from the 1816 or whatever..mother.father and two infants,it especaily makes me sad thinknig of little kids dying and babies..

 

Nerdette, you have a tender compassionate heart and I hope you always will.
When we stopping thinking about the differences we have with people from other times and places, we can start thinking about what we have in common.

I visited a neolithic village in England, about 4,000 maybe 5,000 years old.
It was a cluster of stone huts and nearby, the chamber tomb of an honored ancestor.
But it felt like they had just stepped away for a moment. Briefly, time collapsed and I was one of them, looking out across the grassy hill toward the sea. Were they fishing just beyond the horizon? Were they frolicking in the sun-warmed shallows below the bluff? Digging a garden in the soft earth by the bay? Then I blinked, lurched and fell back to the present day, slightly disoriented, even a little angry to be back. I miss them.

 

With a life expectancy of 30 years back in Neolithic Britain they must have seemed like small children playing and yet they had the knowledge and technology to move great stones weighing many tons


Hotwater

 

Wasnt the grandfather that disappointed me, he was cool, a drummer in a jazz band then a gunner in the navy, got his ship blown to smithereens, and obviously a complete player all the way through. One of the more interesting relatives. It was everyone elses little act that peeved me

And I'm going to challenge the cynics tag on this one a pull out the gay card, as its compounded because of that. Growing up hearing, oh no back in our day there was none of that kind of stuff, there werent any gay people, everybody got married at 19 and we were all goody two shoes.....bullshit, the hetero version wasnt even like that in my grandads day. So just ends up sounding like one giant conspiracy

 

Whether you're 50ish and listening to a 80ish parent or 100ish (if you're lucky to have one still around) grandparent, or a 20 something listening to a 50ish parent or heck just listening to anyone older than you realize that the commin thread is that things WERE diffferent back then. They are giving you their perspective which is of course shaded by what they experienced. Learn from it, appreciate the differences and why they exist. Do some research and get different perspectives but most importantly learn something and make yourself better for it. We are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past if we do not learn from them.

 

I love old people telling about the past, Ive learned so much from old people

 

When my grandpa picked me up from school one day many years ago he told me about how when he was my age he and his family would ride a horse and buggy to get to school. He and a few other classmates would ride it with him. He said that you could sleep on the ride on the way back home because the horse knew the way back by heart and didn't need any direction or reminding.

My grandpa is still alive at 97. He wasn't the best story teller. But this was one of his stories that stood out the most to me.

 

what was frustrating to me, was not that they would talk about things before i was born like it was yesterday for them, and even that they seemed to think the world hadn't changed since, but that they would always talk about the SAME incidents, instead of telling me more about different things that were going on in the same timeframe that i might have been more interested in.

one of the reasons, probable the main reason i avoid the company of people who have used substances as substitutes for imagination today, is their tendency to do the same thing. same goes for people who believe in the myth of normality.

there is no such thing as normality, there is only mundanesness(conventionality) or creativity, and of the two, creativity is by far the more noble and redeaming.

 

Exactly my general experience and the reason why I avoid conversations with most old peeps about 'the good old times' now.

 

I was fortunate to have two great-grandmothers and both sets of grandparents until I was in my teens. I heard my share of stories but would dearly love to hear more.

I've got my own to tell these days though, and those of my parents and what I remember of their parents. And I tell 'em. It's a good feeling to think that my sons will likely pass on at least a couple about me. That's a form of immortality most of us can achieve.

 

actually, backin the sixties/seventies, wegot infatuated with the fifties: sock-hops, saddle-shoes, leather jackets, etc. and we found many adults who were willing to share stories about the "days gone by". and we ate it up. but we were still children of the sixties, whether we liked it or not. that goes just as much now for the currently-exsisting generational mixture. i'm still a child of the sixties, whether i like it or not(by the way,i do like it!).

 

I've always sort of like listening to people talk about the 'old times' guess im just weird.

 

no you are not weird...i love doing it and i love listening to it...i used to go to the store with a dollar and buy my mom 2 packs of smokes and have a bunch of money leftover for candy...and the candy was dirt cheap

 

well i'm an old fart now myself, and i still prefer to hang out on line in places where young people are doing new and imaginative things.

when my grandparents (i only ever met one of them, my mom's mom, and her only once) were kids everyone rode horses

when my parents were kids everyone rode trains.

when i was little there were still lots of trains, even when i was officially an adult there were still a lot of buses and some trains.

my dad was an abused child by his single parent father, but he also had happy memories of collecting and processing maple sap into maple sugar and syrup.

my mom grew up on the lower east side of new york when it was the yiddish section. that's what they called the language they spoke.

my dad left home the first time when he was 9, and perminently when he was 11. his father had a stroke and died institutionalized during the great depression.

my dad's teenaged years were riding freight trains, joining and then going awol from the civilian conservation corps. ending up in new york, meeting my mom. marrying her. then wwii came along. he was a sargent before they realized they had forgotten to send him through basic training. that was how mixed up things were. after the war he went to work for the railroad(s). that's what he did for the rest of his working life.

telegrapher/towerman/clerk. we rode the trains on his pass when we wanted to go to the city to see the sights. i was viet nam era. joined the airforce because i didn't have balls enough to hitchhike to canada. it all worked out though. they never sent me over there. gave me a loonie discharge instead. story to that too.

didn't know i could have gotten an nsc then. got one now though.

 

I had a story,but who among the young ones wants to hear it. No one. So fuck it. I guess I didn't know it was so wonderfull nowadays that the old days just bored people. I get it.

 

I think that's exactly right. To claim that everything was better back in the good old days is silly. I also think the biggest difference between life today and life 50 years ago is that everything is faster paced (although it might just be that I'm slower thinking now .. lol).

But when I say "everything", I mean cultural and societal happenings. Human relationships don't change. People still laugh, cry, love, hurt the same way they have for 100,000 years.

I wish I could have known my great-grandmother. She was killed in the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. What stories she could have told! She lived in a time of such massive upheaval of her way of life, and that of her people.

Of my grandchildren today, only one of them is all that interested in my life. It's always disheartening when young people dismiss me as simply a doddering old fool without anything intelligent to contribute. The truth is, I'm no different from anyone else ... some things I have to say are silly bullshit, but some things are pure wisdom. The trick is to be smart enough and aware enough to know the difference.

My neighborhood is only a few blocks from the campus of a major state university, and I'm surrounded by students. Some of them chat with me, some don't. Some are interesting to talk to, some aren't. Some of them know how to treat people right, some don't. The best of them recognize that there is more to people than clothing styles and taste in music.

And as far as the "good old days" are concerned ... hell, at my age, any day I wake up is a good old day

 

Same here. But get off my lawn,you old crack!JK. People are the same as always,I suppose. Just more gadgets exist.