You know that you're old school if you can....

OK, I love doing this...

If you are out at a bar and you see a pretty little 21-year old coed, that means she was born around 1985. If you go by the logic that she really has no memory of anything before she was five, that makes this cut off at 1990.

So if you are trying to hit on this girl, do not mention the following because she does not remember ever using them, just old people like us talking about them.

Cassette tapes
Phones with cords on them
Ronald Reagan or the first George Bush
Michael Jordan in college
Tom Landry
Chuck Noll
Life without cable TV
Wine coolers
Black and white TVs
Barely remembers Johnny Carson
21 Jump Street or Moonlighting or Dynasty or Dallas being in prime time
Rain Man, Big, Field of Dreams or Die Hard being in the theaters
The Berlin Wall or being afraid of the Russians
Hands Across America or the Live Aids
Metal bands
Station wagons
Pete Rose playing
The Smiths, New Order or Run DMC


Those are just a few that I could think of off the top of my head.

 

Want to feel old? Using this criteria, a kid who's now in the fifth grade would have no memory of 9/11.

 

When you remember that McDonald's was a rare treat for good grades or otherwise good behavior.

Wiffle Ball, PrestoMagix, tracing paper, Speak and Spell, Charlie McCarthy, Trapper Keepers and Jams shorts.

That King Hippo's only vulnerability was repeated shots to his ample midsection.

 

McDonald's scatch-off game during the Los Angeles Olympics was great. You'd win food or drink depending on how well the U.S. did in the events, and with the Russians boycotting, I must have eaten there for basically free every day during the summer of '84.

 

When you can still remember exactly where you were when Kennedy was shot.

 

... remember when "looseys" (cigarettes sold - illegally, by the way - individually) cost a nickel.

... remember watching Ali-Spinks on network TV in prime time.

 

The MTV Vee-jay was shot?

 

... remember when the big boxing matches were shown on closed-circuit feeds at movie theatres because there was no cable and, thus, no pay-per-views.

 

One of my earliest sports memories is of my brothers gathered in the kitchen around a black-and-white TV watching Ali-Shavers.

 

remember when good porn was on a reel to reel.

 

Wow, great thread.

SportsCenter had business news as a lead-in.

 

remember when Fred Hickman had hair and didn't try to look hip in glasses, that ESPN actually meant Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.