Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. A quarter of the class has at least one immigrant parent, and the immigration debate is not a big priority…unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.
14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.
16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.
24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a recording.
25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.
26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.
30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.
31. The first computer they probably touched was an Apple II; it is now in a museum.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always been an alternative to hospitals.
35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.
36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.
37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”
38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.
41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.
43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.
44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.
45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local and federal programs to earn money for college.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.
48. Someone has always gotten married in space.
49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.
50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.
51. Food has always been irradiated.
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.
55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.
57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.
58. Beethoven has always been a dog.
59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was gone.
60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.
61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.
62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has always been routine.
63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.
67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the U.S.
69. The Post Office has always been going broke.
70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.
71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.
72. One way or another, “It’s the economy, stupid” and always has been.
73. Silicone-gel breast implants have always been regulated.
74. They’ve always been able to blast off with the Sci-Fi Channel.
75. Honda has always been a major competitor on Memorial Day at Indianapolis
Thanks to my Dad for emailing this to me!
Where’s my cane? All of a sudden I feel the urge to dust off my Body Count CD to listen to Cop Killer (yes, I actually HAVE THAT!). But I forgot which box I packed it in. You know, senility.
BusyDad´s most recent brilliance ..The Grisliest- a crime scene investigation
I’m SAYIN’! I feel like I should pull out the Denture Cream.
And seriously.. NEVER coiled a phone cord around their wrist… {faints}
And NIRVANA on the oldies… shoot me now
P.S. of COURSE you have that.
I love that you have that. No wonder you and Nathan hit it off so well.
That’s kind of terrifying.
Dorothy´s most recent brilliance ..Dear Glenn Beck
Isn’t it!
I still have a home phone and I refuse to get rid of it.
I tell myself it is for safety reasons (because when the murderer breaks into kill me surely he will take my cell phone so I can’t call for help) but it is obviously just to “say no” to technology – because surely my murderer will know to cut the stupid phone lines.
Dorothy´s most recent brilliance ..Dear Glenn Beck
LOL Dorothy, I love the logic!
Is Nirvana really on the classic oldies station?
What’s the world coming to?
Hell in a hand-basket, apparently
And now I feel old, too. LOL
I graduated from high school in ’92! And I have two nieces heading to college this year (four nieces in college total).
#getoffmylawn #turnthatmusicdown
Malia´s most recent brilliance ..Hands On Democracy
#backwhenIwasyoung #inmydaywewalked10milestoschooluphillbothwaysin12feetofsnow
#younghoodlums
My brother, not my YOUNGEST brother, because my parents are insane, but ONE OF my brothers, born in 1992, is starting as a freshman at SFSU next week.
It boggles the mind.
Miss Grace´s most recent brilliance ..Story Time
I love you, girl. Even your comments make me smile
Mind boggling INDEED
My YOUNGEST brother was born in 1997. The same year my sister graduated from high school.
He’ll be in 8th grade when he starts school next week.
He’s also my go-to babysitter, which is an added bonus.
(I love you too, naturally)
I graduated from HS in ’92 (I know – GASP!). Surprised I can still remember it . . . can’t I?
Hmm – anyway – what a trip down memory lane! I wasn’t sure whether it made me feel sorry for this generation or happy – I guess some of both.
Mela Kamin´s most recent brilliance ..BOLDNESS of a child
LOL Mela
You’re so cute.
I’m with you on that one, some things, experiences, people etc.. it saddens me that they’ll have no working knowledge of but… so many things are better.. aren’t they?
Wow, I feel old as well. Scary to think they would also not understand why the cold war was called a war in the first place. Or the Berlin wall never existing except in pictures, or even changing a channel on the TV without a remote control.
Amazing though what we have experienced in our lives since this time. To them, the Internet always existed and AOL always sucked! Or what 14.4, 28.8, 56 mean in terms of a modem. Crazy!
Hockeymandad´s most recent brilliance ..Get Your Nerd On
I bet they’ve never even HEARD of Prodigy?!
MommyNamedApril´s most recent brilliance ..it marches on
Thank God I’m not the only “ancient” one on here who graduated from high school in 1992! That thought about Nirvana kind of makes me want to curl up in the corner and cry, because I remember how groundbreaking their sound was when I first heard them in 1991. It seems like it was yesterday…
Alana´s most recent brilliance ..Miscellaneous Ramblings
Alana, YES! I seriously get that. How can it have been… 19 years (faints)
I’m not sure all of this is completely true. My ten and six year old nieces both know that pointing to the wrists is a request for the time. But indeed even for someone as young as myself some of these are pretty astounding! And I decided a long time ago that i would always have a mounted home phone with a huge spiral cord in the kitchen of my home. I should probably go out and buy that now before they really and truly don’t exist rather than just being obsolete!
Melissa´s most recent brilliance ..Pictures make everything better Or they did until now
Of course not all of these apply to everyone, everywhere
Like so many lists of this ilk they can vary from region to region and culture to culture.
I know many high schoolers who don’t get the wrist tapping, have never heard of Dr. Kevorkian other than as a catch phrase and even then they don’t understand what they’re referencing.
Thanks for stopping in to comment!
I was just recently asking a college student if they knew what a floppy disk was. They starred at me like I was crazy!
Krystyn´s most recent brilliance ..Yum…pie…Banquet does it right
Is it wrong of me to say how much I loved floppy disks? There’s something about them {sigh}
John McEnroe has never played professional tennis?!?! This one astounds me… it can’t have been THAT long???
(and we still have a phone with a coil cord. our kids WILL play with the coil cord, dammit!)
heehee
MommyNamedApril´s most recent brilliance ..it marches on
April, they may have been alive when he was playing but, they wouldn’t know it.
LOL. I am so buying a corded phone ^^^ see response to Melissa
whats up with the domino’s pizza one?
You don’t remember the 30 minutes or it’s free thing?
There were numerous accounts of their delivery people being in accidents, getting tickets and other reckless behavior to ensure that the pizzas were delivered in the promised UNDER 30 minutes or it was free.
i actually was only 5 in 1992 lol thanks for clarifying that one for me though
NO worries
LOL.
he’s an 87 baby, I wonder if he knows about the Domino’s deal… hmmmmmmmmmm
I remember it because it was actually a HUGE deal for a while. I think that makes you the same age as my youngest brother
The cursive thing infuriates me. My kids are learning it in provate school, but still I am APPALLED that public schools are dropping it.
amy2boys´s most recent brilliance ..Easy Baby Bries – Apricot and Cherry
I work with a 22 year old girl that had to google Gary Coleman and Rue McClanahan when they died. She has never seen the Breakfast Club or Pretty in Pink and makes me feel ridiculously old on a daily basis. Which I thank her for on a daily basis. By cursing at her.
Another Hot Mess´s most recent brilliance ..I Go Down A Lot
A little part of me just died.
Rue McClanahan is an icon, she is Southern Sass and awesome at it’s best.
Pretty in Pink and Breakfast Club should be rites of passage movies. My daughter will see them and Dazed and Confused and Sixteen Candles and SO many other movies.
{sigh}