Your Most Disturbing Realizations

[Inkstainedwretch]

I was born in 1947 and for the first 20-odd years of my life, WWII was simply "the war." That stuff in Korea and Vietnam didn't count. Many years later, my teenaged stepson asked me what I'd done in WWII. I was forced to admit that I hadn't been born for that one, my war was Vietnam. He said, "Well, you know, that war back then." Apparently all pre-80s wars were lumped together as "that war back then." WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, they just sort of blur together.

 

[GHT]

When I was a kid, there were so many milestone birthdays, 6, 12, 13,15, 18, and of course 21! Then they start getting fewer, 30 and 50 I guise. Now, there are only two left that I can think of, 65, which I will most likely make with ease and 100, which I most likely wont make!

"At age 4 success is...not peeing your pants.
At age 12 success is...having friends.
At age 17 success is...having a driver's license.
At age 20 success is...having sex.
At age 35 success is...having money.
At age 50 success is...having money.
At age 65 success is...having sex.
At age 70 success is...having a driver's license.
At age 75 success is...having friends.
At age 80 success is....not peeing your pants."

 

[GHT]

Perhaps not disturbing, more bewildered amusing. Cracks me up when young drivers go misty-eyed over cars that I drove when they were brand new. Classic cars? I don't think so.

 

[Trenchfriend]

It's somehow strange, when I think about meeting my school-mates the first time on beginning of primary school. That was 1991, 24 years ago. Nearly quarter of a century.

 

[GHT]

Don't attend school reunions, your cohorts will all look so old. You won't of course, your daily appearance in the mirror is testimony to that.

 

[astrang1]

Hello,
Most of these comments have brought a wry smile , especially the ones about about Star Wars and Alien. However my most disturbing realisation was last week when I had to explain to someone 'what the Berlin Wall was.' How quickly history becomes forgotten...........
Al

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

A couple of years ago, a restaurant on old Route 66 (Central Avenue) in Albuquerque was to be demolished. The local historical society protested and wanted it preserved for its "historical value as an example of classic Route 66 architecture." It was built in 1966. My brain did a flip-flop and I went, "Wait a minute! I was here in college in 1966! Things that have happened or been made in my lifetime are not historical!" At least, that's what I like to think.

 

[Juanito]

The other thing that disturbs me is the general increase in cost of items in real terms. I realize there is inflation and my profession is banking so I am familiar with finance, but please consider the following as it stresses the importance of getting ahead of the curve financially as soon as possible.

In 1985, I bought Levi 501 shrink-to-fit jeans for $14.99 and they were made in the US. Today they sell for $68.99 a pair and the tags say Israel, Egypt, Haiti, Mexico and Poland. That's over a 450% increase in cost.
In 1985, tuition at Oregon State University was $470 a term, or $1,410 a year. Today it is $3,369 a term or $10,107 a year--over a 700% increase.

Minimum wage at that time was $3.35/hour. That means a student would have to work 140 hours over 3 months to foot tuition as a basic calculatio--about 12 hours a week. Today the minimum wage in Oregon is $9.25, so the same student today would need to work 364 hours--30 hours a week.

The disturbing thing here, is that to make up for this we have turned to cheap, imported goods to close the gap on the lower end.

 

[Trenchfriend]

The capitalism is changing again and again. Germany is now in the tertiary-phase. China actual goes into tertiary-phase.

The global market is absolutely saturated, I think. Luxury-brands are going down, normal brands are going down, too, because the fairly-priced (solid-quality)store-brands supresses them. Especially foods and clothing, in Germany.

 

[GHT]

There's no more disturbing realisation than going from a 32" waist to a 34." Five years later, with an ever expanding waistline, what wouldn't you give for that 34" waist?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'd love to have a 34" waist again. The 27" I had in my twenties is way, way out of reach.

 

[Stanley Doble]

The other thing that disturbs me is the general increase in cost of items in real terms. I realize there is inflation and my profession is banking so I am familiar with finance, but please consider the following as it stresses the importance of getting ahead of the curve financially as soon as possible.

In 1985, I bought Levi 501 shrink-to-fit jeans for $14.99 and they were made in the US. Today they sell for $68.99 a pair and the tags say Israel, Egypt, Haiti, Mexico and Poland. That's over a 450% increase in cost.
In 1985, tuition at Oregon State University was $470 a term, or $1,410 a year. Today it is $3,369 a term or $10,107 a year--over a 700% increase.

Minimum wage at that time was $3.35/hour. That means a student would have to work 140 hours over 3 months to foot tuition as a basic calculatio--about 12 hours a week. Today the minimum wage in Oregon is $9.25, so the same student today would need to work 364 hours--30 hours a week.

The disturbing thing here, is that to make up for this we have turned to cheap, imported goods to close the gap on the lower end.

Inflation is a bigger thing than people realize even though it is not talked about in the news anymore. The Fed deliberately causes inflation, their stated goal is to cause 2% inflation per year.

How many know that 2% inflation cuts the value of your money in half in 36 years? And it is seldom that low. They keep changing the method of calculating inflation to make it look smaller. If they used the same formula they used in the seventies, we would have 12% inflation which cuts your money in half in 6 years.

This ad appeared in 1950. Can you imagine a 25 year old, buying this plan, and attempting to retire on $200 a month in 1990 at age 65? And how would they be doing today, age 90?

Do you see what I mean by inflation being a bigger problem than people realize?

 

[a2jacketpatches]

To prove a point to myself today, I asked a 30 year old who attacked Pearl Harbor. "The Nazis?"

 

[ChiTownScion]

I traced my paternal lineage back to the mid-1600's, mainly to a little village on the Mosel river in Germany. It was my great grandfather who decided to strike out for a new life in the US in the early 1870's. My dad came into the world in 1924: his mother died when he was three, he ended up in an orphanage, and really had a turbulent childhood. My grandfather was an abusive tyrant on those rare occasions when he was actually around, otherwise Dad pretty much had no parental guidance, He found eventually structure and a sense of comradeship when he entered high school and became active in JROTC. Later went on to serve in the Army in North Africa, Britain, France, Belgium, and eventually, Germany.

I often wonder how my dad would have turned out had great grandfather Nikolas remained in Germany and he had grown up there with a similar turbulent family life. My guess is that he would have been ripe pickings for the Hitler Youth and found his identity there, embracing its fanaticism and likely growing up to become an Eastern Front casualty, or worse. My even being born would not be likely, given that my birth parents even encountering one another is improbable.

So, I guess the disturbing realization for me is that, but for that circumstance of my GGF immigrating to the US- and about a million other intervening superseding circumstances both precedent and subsequent- I would not have even been born.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

I've sometimes come to the uncomfortable realization that I owe my existence to the atomic bomb. In order for me to be born, Dad had to be back from overseas by no later than late September 1946. When the war ended his outfit was packing up to move up the Chinese coast to support the upcoming invasion of the Japanese home isles. The news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an abrupt end to these preparations. Had the war dragged on for another year, the likelihood is good that Dad wouldn't have gotten back in time to engender me.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Every trip up the step ladder, every bag of garbage taken out, reminds me of how much easier these little tasks used to be. My physical movements are usually accompanied by sound effects.

Oh, my brother, this comment literally had me laughing out loud simply because I can relate to it so well!

Kids today think of 1985, the year I graduated high school, the same way we thought of 1955 when we saw Back to the Future.

Another forum I frequent is comprised of people who are movie fans who like to replicate props and costumes from their favorite movies (The Replica Prop Forum). During recent conversations in forums about the Back to the Future and Star Wars "original trilogy" movies, some of the members commented about how they wish they'd been old enough to see those movies in a theater and it made my joints ache.

...I'm about to see my seventh Star Wars film in the theatre on its release...

I would be able to say that as well, but I didn't go to see Episodes I or II in the theater because everyone I knew who did (at the time) told me they were rubbish. I have seen them, but not in a theater.

 

[Fading Fast]

There's no more disturbing realisation than going from a 32" waist to a 34." Five years later, with an ever expanding waistline, what wouldn't you give for that 34" waist?

There is something very odd in how our bodies and metabolism evolve. Most people are like you - most people in my family are like you - but my mom, her grandfather (not her mom or dad or grandmother) and I all have maintained the same waist and weight our entire lives. That said, my appetite has shrunk by at least half (at my present age of 51 versus, say, 25), so I am the same weight and waist only because I eat about half of what I used to. My mom at 82 eats, literally, about a third or a quarter of what she did when she was a young adult. She eats like a bird, picking at a little food several times a day.

And this is the thing - and it shocked me when I realized it (my "shocking realization") - my appetite shifted down meaningfully in my forties, but most people's don't. I simply can't eat the big meals, can't eat the volume of food I used to - I run out of steam long before I could finish the meal, but I'm told and I see that, that is unusual. Now I know most people hate me for this (hopefully, not really), and I understand that feeling, but a few things: (1) I have no control over it, (2) I - like my mom and her grandfather - are always cold and (3) it is embarrassing as a man as eating large meals is a cultural norm at many social gatherings and I take my share of abuse (I'm not asking for sympathy, I'm a big boy), but it is something you only realize if you can't participate.

So to my first statement - it seems odd that evolution has allowed for people to have appetites that causes them to gain weight that - if our current medical view is correct - isn't healthy. And I knew - was truly shocked - something had changed in me when my ability to eat a full meal went away.

 

[HudsonHawk]

In 1985, tuition at Oregon State University was $470 a term, or $1,410 a year. Today it is $3,369 a term or $10,107 a year--over a 700% increase.

When I started college in Texas in 1985, in-state tuition was $60/term, or a whopping $120 per year. If you were out-of-state, you paid the outrageous amount of $480/year. Today it's $9,798 for in-state and $33,842 for out-of-state.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Don't know if it's disturbing but I notice when I read the news or watch it on TV the world keeps getting worse and worst. But when I look at my own life things keep getting better and better.

 

[Edward]

Kids today think of 1985, the year I graduated high school, the same way we thought of 1955 when we saw Back to the Future.

There's a popular meme currently doing the rounds on Facebook which points out that as of a couple of weeks ago, the entire Back to the Future trilogy is set exclusively in the past.

The realization that my daughter has no idea how to operate a rotary phone (I don't even know if she's seen one!), cannot conceive of a world without the Internet, and has no idea what a set of encyclopedias is.

My brother's kids are growing up in a world where so much technological change that I saw as an adult is baseline for them. Probably the same for most generations, of course, but it's weird when you start to feel it yourself.

FWIW, I'm now teaching final year undergraduate students who were born in 1995; some of them don't even remember dial-up internet. The first PM they can remember was Blair; Thatcher had been out of office for five years before they were born. Had little Jamie Bulger not been murdered, he'd be four or five years older than most of them now.

My brothers kids know what the symbols for 'phone' or 'save' mean on the computer, but they don't understand where some of these symbols come from. I don't think they've ever seen a floppy disk. To them, the VCR is as the gramophone to me.

Steve Jones, Sex Pistols guitarist, recently turned 60.

It's fascinating to me to think of the Pistols' ages. I remember very clearly sitting, about 1990 reading an interview with Johnny Rotten in the 2000AD Summer Special, and they said "Now you're 35...", and it seemed quite old. Now I'm 41. I remember discovering the Pistols for myself in 89/90, and loving them.... a teacher in school once told us we were "ten years too late for punk". It's strange now to think that a lot of the great albums I discovered were them only about ten years old..... as Pulp's Different Class, which I bought on release, turned 20 last week....

Had he lived, Sid Vicious would have been in his late fifties now. That's hard to imagine.

I'm about to see my seventh Star Wars film in the theatre on its release.

It's been eighteen years since they RE-released Star Wars (A New Hope).

Jinkies. Star Wars has been dead to me for eighteen years. How did that happen?