Ha... I'm 4 months younger than my wife. So for 4 months every year, I get to be the biggest jerk on the planet by teasing her about being in to younger men, asking how her memory has been lately, etc.

Of course, she's quick to remind me that she looks a decade younger than I do, so I guess she's the real winner.

... actually, doesn't that still make me the winner? :D

I console myself with the fact that I'm 7 years younger than my wife.

She gets pretty pissed when we talk about how old we both were in the 80s. :D

;p

I'm so old...

My Xbox handle has no numbers and is a legible, normal word
I played Pathways into Darkness when it first came out
I recall my games fitting on a single 3.5' disk with room to spare
I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs
Once my Apple IIe disk drive had an infestation of aphids that got on the 5 1/2 floppy and it ground them up and spewed green goo all over the desk.

I used to frequent arcades when games were 20 cents to play.
I used to keep 20 cents in my Kangaroo shoes (they had pockets!) so as to call home on a pay phone so my parents could pick me up.
I remember when the price of a soda at a vending machine jumped to 40 cents!
At the age of 6 most of my classmates and I would walk several blocks home alone and no one thought this was strange at all.
I ordered the special Haley's Comet Matchbox car when it last came around, chipped off the paint playing with it and repainted it to match KITT from KnightRider.

When the price of a slice of pizza at the famous Ray's Pizza here in Manhattan, NYC across the street of the elementary school I went (yes, THAT Ray's was our go-to lunch spot) - anyway, when it went up to 75 cents, everyone threw a shit fit.

- M

I'm so old...

My Xbox handle has no numbers and is a legible, normal word
I played Pathways into Darkness when it first came out
I recall my games fitting on a single 3.5' disk with room to spare
I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs
Once my Apple IIe disk drive had an infestation of aphids that got on the 5 1/2 floppy and it ground them up and spewed green goo all over the desk.

I used to frequent arcades when games were 20 cents to play.
I used to keep 20 cents in my Kangaroo shoes (they had pockets!) so as to call home on a pay phone so my parents could pick me up.
I remember when the price of a soda at a vending machine jumped to 40 cents!
At the age of 6 most of my classmates and I would walk several blocks home alone and no one thought this was strange at all.
I ordered the special Haley's Comet Matchbox car when it last came around, chipped off the paint playing with it and repainted it to match KITT from KnightRider.

I called a hint line!
I cut actual physical film.
I was amazed at the quality of Might Ducks on Laserdisc.
I saw a TOS Star Trek film in a theatre on release.
I memorized all my friend's phone numbers!
I saw a cigarette advertisement with Joe Camel!
I did actual work on a computer with 1MB RAM and a 40MB hard drive.
I got a lego set in a happy meal.
"Please insert the FINAL segment of the archive" had me confused as fuck.
"Cody, I have to make a phone call, get off the internet!"
I remember life before the internet.
Gas was 99¢ a gallon.

Mine's a mix of old and country:
- We had a party line (several households sharing the same phone line).
- I was about to start college when they paved our road.
- Never had cable, but finally got satellite in high school.
- First computer was an Apple II. It was a loaner from a rich couple who owned a farm 5 miles away.
- I watched more TV on a black and white TV than color during my childhood. Much of that TV watching before I was school age was done in a chicken house.
- During most of my childhood we didn't have a street address, just a route and box number.
- Even though we had indoor plumbing, we still had an outhouse out back.
- I learned to drive a tractor before learning to drive a car.
- I got my first Walkman when I was 10 and wore out a Don Williams cassette tape while working on our farm.

I'm so old...

My Xbox handle has no numbers and is a legible, normal word
I played Pathways into Darkness when it first came out
I recall my games fitting on a single 3.5' disk with room to spare

Ditto to all of that.

I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs

I remember when our school got one of the first computer labs in the state, it was full of Apple ][e's, they all had green screens. I spent all the time in there that I could. Oregon Trail, Logo Turtle Graphics & Printshop FTW!

I used to frequent arcades when games were 20 cents to play.
I used to keep 20 cents in my Kangaroo shoes (they had pockets!) so as to call home on a pay phone so my parents could pick me up.
I remember when the price of a soda at a vending machine jumped to 40 cents!
At the age of 6 most of my classmates and I would walk several blocks home alone and no one thought this was strange at all.
I ordered the special Haley's Comet Matchbox car when it last came around, chipped off the paint playing with it and repainted it to match KITT from KnightRider.

Yup to most of this, except I only vividly recall the arcades being a quarter, maybe 20¢.

I'll play.

I cried when #1 song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" played on the radio. (So I'm told.)
I spent a lot of time with my grandmother growing up. (She lived with us.) She was born in 1889.
My first favorite show was called "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour." Also dug H.R. Pufnstuf.
I watched us land on the moon the first time (at school no less--everyone alive on the planet did, if they could sit up and had access to TV).
I remember being amazed by Pong at the local Kmart.
My first "video game" after Pong was Mattel Electronic Football.
My favorite arcade games had vector graphics, like Red Baron and Tempest
The gaming fad at my high school was backgammon. I'm serious. People brought sets to school (until they were banned).
I remember us not having a microwave oven or a coffee maker. (My parents drank instant coffee.)
From the age of about 10 on, I went wherever I wanted when school was out as long as I was home by dark.
Nixon was the first president I remember, and I was mad about Watergate mainly because the news coverage interrupted some of my favorite shows.
I learned to type on an IBM selectric writing a letter to CBS because they cancelled the truly awful Planet of the Apes TV series.
I watched Evel Knievel (not) jump over the Snake River canyon live on closed Circuit TV.
When my dad and I were picking out my first stereo at age 11 the salesman tried to tell me that cassettes were the future. I laughed at him. There were SO MANY MORE EIGHT-TRACKS in the stores.
When I started my first job at a record store, there were albums, and about half and half cassettes and eight tracks. John Lennon was still alive.
Let's just say I lost my innocence in more ways than one the day the space shuttle Challenger blew up.
My first computer was a Macintosh 512K. I remember how excited I was when I finally got a second floppy drive and no longer had to swap disks.
I was a Bungie fan before I could play Bungie games. (I had a Mac Classic until Marathon came out, and that game is why I bought a Power Mac.) Before I lived vicariously through reviews in MacWorld and such.

- My first computer was (iirc) a Commodore Pet with no disc drive or hard drive, such that every time you turned it on you had to write the program that you wanted it to run. In BASIC. There was a magazine we got delivered every month that contained programs for you to retype. I spent all day writing hangman (which only had 3 words built into it) and then the power went out for 2 seconds and I lost it and had to start over.

- Our TV came in a box that had COLOR written on it with each letter in a different color, I assume in case you didn't know what the heck the word "color" meant.

- We had duck and cover drills in elementary school in case the Russians bombed us.

- My mom took me to a Dukakis rally.

- I saw the Challenger explode, live on TV. :(

- No one knew baseball players did steroids.

- Everyone loved Bill Cosby.

- Mike Tyson was going to be the next champ, we just knew it!

- We read 1984 and thought "Ha, look how the people in the past had baseless worries about the future."

- I had complete sets of Garbage Pail Kids series 1 and 2.

- Tom Cruise was younger than the romantic female lead in his latest movie, which also had this hilarious scene where he danced around in his underwear.

- Tupac was alive.

- Rambo helped the Taliban.

- No one in Predator was a governor yet.

So many more. Lordy.

what is it like to grow up depending on technology and having not even the faintest idea how it works? :P

Oooh, yeah. I bet discovering fire was real big. Definitely would have gone viral if the internet was around then.

hahaha, good one. no internet, you crack me up lil buddy.

- No text -

I literally conquered every system and every planet except Earth. It was the only one I didn't control. And believe me, I tried, for like 2 hours. Earth's defense fleet was just so massive I got bored and gave up. Actually I think I ran out of Torpedoes.

Tell me about it! I said the "entire galaxy" for ease of language. But the truth is I got every planet save Earth as well. I showed up in my Confederate Cruiser, with my fleet of 6 other Confed Cruisers, launched my 30 fighters and battled for hours and hours and hours and never could finish them all off. Part of me wonders if Ambrosia didn't simply program Earth to be unconquerable?

- No text -

I mean, banana is forever... right...?

Ever hear of the Gros Michel?