When did I get old?

It's silly, but I still think of myself as being at least ten years younger than I actually am.  I earned my Ph.D. at age 26.  I began an academic career teaching graduate courses to persons who were much older than I was.  In my mind that is still the case.  However, as I near the monumental milestone - four - o - my delusions are becoming increasingly more apparent.

Nowhere does this reality slap me harder than in my classroom.  I'm still teaching graduate students, but now they are YOUNG.  Wow.  The jokes that once had students in stitches now leave nothing but crickets in the room.  Even worse than thinking that I'm no longer funny is the realization that they really have no idea what I am talking about.  Reagan was in his second term when they were born!  They have no idea what Land Shark is.  They don't know the Brady's or Gilligan and the Skipper.  They know my music because they listen to the oldies on "Retro Night."  When did Nirvana become classic rock?  The clothes I wore in high school are now officially vintage.

A student who prefers to use her digital camera rather than the one on her smart phone referred to herself as "old school."  Old school?  Seriously?  Old school would be the Polaroid that you have to place in the sun for awhile and wait for it to develop!  Or, old school to me was the creepy people who went under a black sheet to take your picture with a camera that blew a puff of smoke.  You didn't have to say, "did you get it?" back then, because the smoke signal indicated the picture was taken.

Old school was photocopies that were purple and smelled funny.  It was being tethered to the wall during a phone call.  It was having one television set that was controlled by your father - and you were the remote.  I can still here the sound of that knob as it turns softly to the next station - 4, 6, 8, 13, U!  Four turns and we were right back to where we started!

I took my daughter to Chicago for a weekend trip.  It's a six hour drive, but we were armed with entertainment.  Between the two of us we had a cellphone, an iphone, a netbook, a Nintendo DS, two iPods and a Garmin.  We were hooked up.  What surprised me, however, was how much she enjoyed pushing the elevator buttons at our hotel.  She would rush in ahead of me and ask what floor.  It took me awhile to realize why these buttons were such a curious novelty.  There are no actual three dimensional buttons anywhere else in her life.  We are a touch screen world.  She selects things with a stylus or the tip of her finger.  She hasn't pushed buttons that large since she was a toddler playing with her baby toys.  How much longer until those are also extinct.  Will we have elevators in which you just have your room key scanned and it takes you to your floor?  No need to contaminate your hands by actually touching something that another human has touched.  I'm surprised that kids today aren't allergic to the buttons, since they now seem to be allergic to everything.  What is happening to us? 

As I reflect on all of that I have written, I realize that there is a very familiar tune that my words are humming.  My parents used to sing this song to me when I was young.  It usually started with, "Well, when I was a boy..."  I would roll my eyes as I was disgusted by such primitive society.  Outhouses, ooh.  Milking your own cow and drinking it warm.  Double ooh.  Is that what my students are thinking about me when I tell them how lucky they are that they can do their library research from the comfort of home, wearing their jammies and simultaneously texting their friends?  When I explain to them how I actually had to walk (uphill both ways) to the campus library and pull journals and books off of the shelf to read them, are they disgusted by the thought of touching dusty old books?  Maybe they are even disgusted by me!

So, I return to my original question.  When did I go from being the young, hip professor to being the dinosaur who has told the same stories for 12 years?  When did I stop listening to popular music?  When did my way of doing things become "old school?"  When did I get old?