Of all true things this is one of the truer ones. ~Yesterday I was reading about the massive crowd at the Kerry stump speech at Tom McCall Waterfront Park, and Eddie Vedder was there. I didn't yet know the swiftboating and gay-marriage-panic attacks would succeed.
So I was born late 60s.
Things from say the 40s are ancient to me.
But things that happened in say the 90s seem basically modern.
This is why "good old days" are so unreliable - it was good cause you were a kid, and sheltered, not because it was better than today.
When I was a little kid, the Vietnam war was *forever* ago, the withdrawal having happened when local third graders were born. Meeting Vietnam vets still on active duty (my stepdad was a reservist) shifted *forever* ago to "before my parents were born". Now it's more like "well before WWII".
Our fridge died and it was cheaper to replace it than repair it. My partner was upset, because she was like “we just bought it like 6 years ago!”
We bought it in 2005.
I just read a memoire from 1860s. A person from my home island (öland, Sweden) described his background, how he moved on to construct naval ships in Boston and eventually ended up back home in Sweden as an industrialist. What he described didn't feel too far off. Sure, different, but not too much.
I totally understand. Back in 1985, the 1965 looked like a world totally apart, if I think about 2004 it seems the same as today. Does it mean that we are getting old? 😅
It's all a matter of proportion. When you were fifteen, something twenty years past happened more than a lifetime ago. Now it happened when you were in your thirties, less than half YOUR lifetime ago. Something that happened five years ago might as well be last week.
I was reminded recently that the old Volkswagen ad with Nick Drake's "Pink Moon" is 25 years old. That hit me hard.
Or facts like Devo's Whip It is as old today as Bing Crosby's "Pennies from Heaven" (1936) was when Whip It came out.
I've narrowed it down to age 17 for me, stuff I watched when I was 16 is sepia toned and ancient, but stuff that came out when I was in my early twenties still feels new
