You know you are getting old when:

[2jakes]

The first time I got to dance with a girl
and this was the top hit song on the radio.

 

[SGTROCK]

When everyone calls you Sir

 

[belfastboy]

I had a homeless looking fellow offer me his seat on a bus. Humbling, I tell you.

 

[Lean'n'mean]

You know you're getting old when you think getting old in interesting.

 

[BlueTrain]

You know you're getting old when you are constantly redefining "old." Old is when you can't do for yourself. Doesn't necessarily happen all at once but one day you wake up and you realize that you don't do much of anything anymore because you can't. I'm not that far along yet.

You also know you're getting old when you discover that you're older than someone on TV who you thought was old. The actress who played Aunt Bee on the Andy Griffith show was three years younger than I am now when the show ended.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

 

[GHT]

You know that you're getting old when the clothes that you put away until they come back in style, come back in style!

 

[GHT]

There was a spam advert about driver's licences that prompted a reminisce. Here in the UK we have credit card type driver's licences. it also shows your home address and on the reverse the types of vehicles that you are entitled to drive. We used to have a small booklet, like a little passport, inside, it had your home address, and the vehicle types you were permitted to drive. There was also a number of blank pages. These were for recording what we called endorsements, driving violations, in other words. It's been 45 years since we used such a licence.

Nowadays, our driver's licence and driving insurance are all kept on a national database, so a police officer only has to type in the car's registration (licence plate) number for all the details that they need. They can, and sometimes do, ask to see your licence. It's a means of ID, although the photo on it should have come up on the police officer's screen.

Occasionally the Police will set up a random road check when they blitz an area to catch out those who haven't bought the compulsory car insurance, as well as those who might have been temporary banned from driving, like those caught drink driving. I went through such a road check in the MG. The officer just selects a random number of cars and they have to pull into the lay-by.

My missus and I were off to a vintage affair, suitably attired, of course, in our MG. They say you know that you are getting old by the way police officers look younger and younger. The officer who asked for my licence looked like he had yet had need to shave. When he asked for my licence, I played dumb and handed him my 1964, passport style, driving licence. He had never seen one, didn't even know that they existed. Didn't even know if they were legal or not. His senior did though and after a chuckle asked if I had my current licence, which I produced. We then had to pose for photos, the old licence got photographed and we were on our way. Shame I didn't think to ask the officer's to pose by the car. Here's that amusing licence.

 

[BlueTrain]

They've had those rules for about 33 years, haven't they?

 

[scottyrocks]

Before I knew what these were, I can't tell you how many times I was swatting at gnats in front of my face.

 

[scottyrocks]

You know that you're getting old when the clothes that you put away until they come back in style, come back in style!

Except leisure suits. Leisure suits will never come back in style. And if they do come back in style, they will still not be back in style.

 

[BlueTrain]

I've seen photos of outfits back in the 1930s and 1940s that approached leisure suits in appearance, if not in color and material. You think plus-fours might come back in style?

 

[LizzieMaine]

What Larry Levittown wore to a patio party, 1950.

 

[BlueTrain]

Touché!

 

[Zombie_61]

...My missus and I were off to a vintage affair, suitably attired, of course, in our MG. They say you know that you are getting old by the way police officers look younger and younger. The officer who asked for my licence looked like he had yet had need to shave. When he asked for my licence, I played dumb and handed him my 1964, passport style, driving licence. He had never seen one, didn't even know that they existed. Didn't even know if they were legal or not. His senior did though and after a chuckle asked if I had my current licence, which I produced. We then had to pose for photos, the old licence got photographed and we were on our way...

If that had happened in this part of the U.S., even if the senior officer appreciated your humor he would probably have confiscated the 1964 license for being an illegal form of identification, and would threaten arrest if you protested. Some police officers are reasonable people, but most I've encountered are of the alpha male "You will do as I say or suffer the consequences" variety.

 

[Fading Fast]

What Larry Levittown wore to a patio party, 1950.

You could cobble together almost all of the '70s men's clothing fashion from clothes that were sold at one point or another from the '20s on.

I am not Lizzie, so I don't remember specifically where I saw it, but I know I've seen, on more than one occasion, platform shoes and boots for men in '30s shoe catalogues as I remember thinking those are nearly identical to the platforms I saw men wear in the '70s. Leisure suits, bell bottoms, long shirt collars worn "over" the jacket collar, bright colors and patterns - they all have very close antecedents in some period from the '20s on. Even the use of synthetic fibers goes back to the early 1900s (and maybe earlier - I just know I've seen them that far back).

The difference is, until the '70s, most of these items seem to have been mainly niche articles or items that weren't adopted by a wide swath of society. It took the full flowering of the '70s to bring many of these outre items into the mainstream (and, then, thankfully, out again).

 

[scottyrocks]

I lived through 1970s leisure suits, as many of us did. When I was 13 my parents bought me some weird blue polyester leisure suit, probably for my bar-mitzvah (egad, that means there is a picture displayed prominently in my parents' house). Even at that age, the sight of it made me gag. But I basically had no say in much of anything back then.

Maybe it was the color, or the lapels, or the material. Yes, the whole thing.

I wanted something out a 1940s film that I saw almost everyday on the '4:30 Movie.' Boxy three-piece. Gray herringbone. But that wasn't happening.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster wore platform boots -- they were a special type of heavy work shoe made for asphalt spreaders. Add those to his snazzy sport coat worn with a black t-shirt, and he'd have fit right in at Manhattan gallery opening in 1979.

 

[Fading Fast]

Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster wore platform boots -- they were a special type of heavy work shoe made for asphalt spreaders. Add those to his snazzy sport coat worn with a black t-shirt, and he'd have fit right in at Manhattan gallery opening in 1979.

I think Herman Munster wore similar footwear. But - and again, only from memory - I believe I saw dress platform shoes and boots - very similar to the shoes and boots that took off in the '70s - in more than one '30s men's shoe catalogue. The catalogues could have been the '50s, but I'm leaning to them being from the '30s.

 

[BlueTrain]

Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster wore platform boots -- they were a special type of heavy work shoe made for asphalt spreaders. Add those to his snazzy sport coat worn with a black t-shirt, and he'd have fit right in at Manhattan gallery opening in 1979.

Speaking of fitting right in, that reminds me of the movie about Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter. I think her husband was better known than she was until recently. Anyway, in the movie, there is a showing of her art at a gallery presumably in Mexico City. It's the typical art gallery scene of people standing around looking at paintings. Although it's in Mexico and everyone more or less looks Mexican, they still somehow also look like people you would see at an art gallery. They fit right in.