Sometimes I Feel So Old...

You know, when you start thinking about people, generations, and the passage of time it's really amazing at how much history has taken place during our time on earth. What's kind of mind-boggling is you consider the average person lives until they're 80-ish years old, and if you count backward in increments of 80, it's only a couple lifetimes back that our country was founded! Of course, that's not quite how the timeline works. In reality, if you take one 80-year lifespan and add parents to it, you're only adding, say, 25 years for each generation because our lives overlap instead of play out end-to-end.

Still, a lot has happened in the world since I was born in 1956.

The race for space began. I remember being in grade school and getting the coolest lunch box/thermos combination in the entire world. The Vanguard rocket thermos was best thing ever! Another space memory was the time I was in a Thriftway grocery store in Auburn, Washington, buying a replacement newspaper for one of my route customers that had not received theirs. I was just walking up to the cashier with it when she jumped up after hearing her radio, screaming, "They've landed on the moon! They've landed on the moon!" I ate it all up. I bought space capsule models, I read space trivia on the backs of the boxes while I ate my breakfast cereal. I snacked on Space Food Sticks.

I lived in a time when people had houses and yards. Stay-at-home moms were the norm. There was very little juvenile delinquency because kids had hobbies, they had parents, and they had space to be kids in. Pushed out the door in any weather to "go play" was typical. We were seldom monitored until it was dinnertime or bedtime, and without worry of being preyed upon or abducted. Being an adolescent in the early sixties (who was not raised on a farm) meant learning about the birds and the bees using our peers and the public library. It was decades before internet.

I've watched the evolution of motor vehicles my whole life. I've seen the ubiquitous Chevy V8 go from  needing tune-ups every 30,000 miles and a complete rebuild at 100,000 miles to not even needing to raise the hood for 100,000 miles. Engines now easily last 300,000 miles, but people take it for granted. No longer are cars bought for engines or drivetrain specifics--now people shop for creature comforts and tech interface gadgetry.

I worked at Karl's Chevron in Auburn during the 1973 "oil crisis". The public buying frenzy got so ridiculous that we were only open for gas sales for 2 hours a day, had a $2.00 limit (yes, I said 2 bucks--gas was way cheap then), and alternated days (odd/even) based on the last digit of your car's license plate. Unbelievable. It happened though. We had no shortage really--the consumers created it. My folks knew if they wanted anything filled up they just needed to bring it down after we closed. Our family always had gas.

The variety of products that sprang forth during my lifetime is staggering. Not even counting tech! things we now take for granted, like Velcro, neon highlighter pens, water-based house paints, car tires that hardly ever puncture, the list is so long. For me, the tech end of things is my favorite I think. Now, we can order anything our hearts desire on the internet, our devices keep their own clock time, and almost everything can be made to operate wireless.