Off-topic: How old ARE you?

[miker]

Show of hands:

Who was born in 1949 or earlier?

I'll start.

Me!

[MikeHalloran]

The peak of the Baby Boom here. 1954

I've been to all 50 states. I crossed #50 off when I revisited my birthplace.

[Djard]

I was born before the Dead Sea got sick... when Moby Dick was just a minnow.

[zuill]

I heard this quote recently:

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?

Satchel Paige"

So, to answer Mike's question: when I forget how old I am, I'll let you know.

Chronologically: a baby-boomer.

Zuill

[Gareth Green]

1960; a mere youngster, evidently ...

[Djard]

Sixties! Still wet behind the ears.

Since being conservative has been deemed by the inventors of politically correctness as virtually illegal, I gingerly posit that from a medical point of view, everyone is about nine months older than what is printed their birthday certificate.

A lot of truth has become hate speech, but I trust I'm still allowed an opinion here. Gulp!

[Bill Stevens]

Older than Mike, which is saying something.

Bill Stevens

[gogreen]

68, but 69 in a mere nine days.

[Djard]

Aging is a process where beauty fades from without and migrates to within...hopefully.

An octogenarian in Munich once shared a pearl with me as we sat in a restaurant, waiting for our schnitzel. He looked far into the distance, that 10,000 yard look, and he said,

"Once I was beautiful. But now...
I'm just beautiful."

He was.

[motet]

Code: Select all

The Nine Ages of Man:  1. Not old enough to know better
                       2.      "     "    "   "    "
                       3.  "   "     "    "   "
                       4.      "     "    "   "
                       5.  "   "     "
                       6.      "     "
                       7.  "   "
                       8.      "
                       9.  "

[BuonTempi]

Well, as a child we didn't have electricity at home, and at school I had to wear a top hat and shirts with separate, starched collars.

But that was the 70s for you.

[Djard]

There three things that indicate old age.

1. Poor memory.
2. Ah....
3. Um...

[David Ward]

Older than Mike, which is saying something.

I think I may be older than Bill…

[Djard]

You can't be older than you are. LOL!

[ebiggs1]

Well before 1949. Finale was still done on stone tablets with a hammer and chisel. Wait...some parts still are!

[EphraimJ]

1948—a few weeks after Israel became a nation! And Truman was in his FIRST term. I'll bet there are people who don't even know we had a president named Truman!

[John Ruggero]

1945 and just a few months after Truman assumed office.

"Some claim that pianists are human,
Heh, and quote the case of Mr. Truman.
Saint Saens on the other hand,
Considered them a scurvy band,
A blight they are he said, and simian,
Instead of normal men and wimian."

—Ogden Nash

[ebiggs1]

I'll bet there are people who don't even know we had a president named Truman!

He was from a bordering state (Missouri) from me. I have been to his house many times.

[Djard]

Cinco fe Mayo. And I'm told by my fellow Lithuanian DPs (displaced person) that I was born on the last day of the war. Maybe the war ended so as not to wake the baby!

EphraimJ, you forgot to place "again" after Israel.

Israel officially became a nation again in 1949. It lost its nationality in A.D. 70, for resisting oppression. As an insult, a Roman emperor later renamed the region as Syria-Paleastinia. Roman coins stamped Judea ceased to be minted then. So Palestine was a name invented by a disgruntled Roman. Historically, Jerusalem was the capital of Judah even before Solomon's reign, c. 1000 BC.

[David Ward]

Israel officially became a nation again in 1949. It lost its nationality in A.D. 70, for resisting oppression. As an insult, a Roman emperor later renamed the region as Syria-Paleastinia. Roman coins stamped Judea ceased to be minted then. So Palestine was a name invented by a disgruntled Roman. Historically, Jerusalem was the capital of Judah even before Solomon's reign, c. 1000 BC.

I'm not sure that everyone places quite the same interpretation as you do on this.

As it happens, in 1936 my elder brother was (most likely) conceived in a German nunnery(!) in East Jerusalem, when my father was part of the British army in Palestine and my mother paid an unofficial visit. Later (1946 I think) the man who was to become my favourite kinsman and who paid for my studies with Alexander Goehr (who has a house in Tel Aviv and whose wife is Israeli) was the target of assassination attempts by both Irkud and the Stern Gang. A friend at school was the son of 'Glubb Pasha' (British general who commanded the Arab Legion) and recently I have collaborated on a piece using fragments of e-mails sent to me from Palestine by a Scottish artist who spent time as an artist in residence with young Palestinians in Ramallah, East Jerusalem and the refugee camps &c &c &c (there's more).

There are so many different and conflicting versions of the history of the Middle East, that I think we should probably try to keep clear of most of them on this forum.

[Djard]

I'll take your good advice. Since many facts have become politically incorrect, and some folks are offended by even the most benign things. I'll remind myself to be as bland as possible, especially since Canada just passed a law that makes it a punishable "hate crime" to address someone with a pronoun that they might not like, which I suppose we'll need to guess. For example, it has become literally risky to call someone who appears to be a he a he if he prefers to be referred to as a she, it or shim.

Raised in Australia during saner times makes it difficult for this septuagenarian to obey the PC police. Yeah, I'm old...walked past a cemetery the other day and two guys attacked me with shovels.

[bvstudios]

1954, born on the first day of school. Dad, being a teacher, stayed at the hospital long enough to learn I was a boy, then went to work.

Try doing that now, I dare ya!

So, I'll be a semi-retired 63 in a couple of months.

[Perotinus]

59 today!!!

[miker]

Happy birthday, but you're still a youngster!

[michelp]

1949, spot on.