I’m six months shy of 61 years old. When I hear someone my age say something crotchety, I enjoy replying ironically, “Get off my lawn!”
My mother, God rest her soul, didn’t like old people from her 50s all the way to her dying age of only 69. She’d say, “Kids, if I ever sound like these other old people.…”
There came a day where all of us were in our 40s and had to say, “Mom, remember when you told us if you sounded like that…?”
I wish I had “Get off my lawn” in my holster back then.
I guess another rejoinder could be – in homage to those two elderly Muppet Show haters, saying to someone being crotchety, “Hey, Statler and Waldorf…!”
“Get off my lawn” is more efficient.
I landed on a social media post the morning after the Super Bowl that made me laugh out loud, reading, “If you didn’t like the Super Bowl halftime show, it was probably past your bedtime.”
Once you reach a certain age, especially when you land outside television’s customary age 18-49 group, you’re not the target audience unless it’s golf, cable news, Wheel of Fortune, or Jeopardy.
This is harder for some people to handle than it is for others.
This – looking from the outside in - doesn’t bother me. I occasionally have to remind myself, nonetheless, I am more than a decade older than the oldest age in the largest target market when something being marketed isn’t grabbing me.
I have a 75-year-old uncle (and godfather - only 15 years my senior) who often reminds me, too, when we discuss something we saw where our age impairs the judgment behind our opinions.
Back to the Super Bowl halftime show.
Well, flared jeans for men will be something many young lads’ girlfriends will be encouraging them to wear.
For practical purposes, coming from a fella whose 32-inch inseam pants are probably too long for him and gather too much upon his shoes, all I see is a few wears before the seams are frayed at the bottom and permanent grit color forms a ring at the bottom.
Folks who think rappers like Kendrick Lamar only appeal to millennials and Gen Z, bear in mind one of the most popular halftime shows among recent Super Bowls was the ensemble of 1990s rappers who were very popular among Gen X, the age group whose oldest members will be turning 60 throughout this calendar year.
Social media posts of Gen X-ers hosting hip-hop themed Super Bowl parties were abundant, and fun to see in terms of the accuracy and some comedy involved in the participants’ outfits.
So, again, as the aforementioned social media post read, “If you didn’t like the Super Bowl halftime show, it was probably past your bedtime” because even Gen X was delighted with a halftime show featuring rap and hip-hop stars from the past.
There are some good-ole days each generation will miss, but here are some things I shall not miss, mostly sports-related, but I’ll start with this one.
Party phone lines – up until 1976 my family was part of several lines in the street all tied together. You had to wait for other people to finish their calls until you could make one. The upside, if you were stealthy enough, you could pick up the line carefully and avoid breathing into the mouthpiece while listening to your neighbors’ conversations.
The downside to a party line was they could do the same thing to you during your phone calls. I remember suddenly around 1976 we finally put in what was called a private line. My mother loved to commiserate, and considering the fact she forgot we were in the house within hearing range, she obviously forgot about the neighbors who listened in, licking their chops. Maybe something she said got back to her.
Tape delayed NBA games – there was a time where CBS, who carried the mid-to-late 1970s NBA games including the finals, would not take their weekday prime time TV shows off the air for NBA Finals games.
One of my favorite playoff series of all time – the Portland Trailblazers coming back from a 2-game opening series deficit to beat the Philadelphia 76’ers four games to two – was comprised of games postponed until after the 11 o’clock (yes… o’clock) news was finished. It was worth losing sleep to watch the series.
The last NBA Finals treated in this manner was the Philadelphia 76’ers-Los Angeles Lakers title series in 1980. The league realized the direction the ratings were headed with rookies Larry Bird (Boston Celtics) and Earvin “Magic” Johnson making an immediate impact on the playing style and the power structure of the league.
I’ve wondered if a Celtics squad featuring Larry Bird might have also contributed to taking the finals off from the tape delay exile it experienced in seasons up through 1980. The Celtics, coincidentally, earned the 1981 NBA title trophy. There were no tape delay finals games that year, or thereafter.
Consider this, kids. There was a time - unfortunately the aforementioned mid-to-late-1970s period - where print and televised media would state openly in commentary and features without flinching that the NBA was “too black.”
Can you imagine hearing or seeing this in media today?
No constant score or time display on TV sports – what was the mindset behind not showing a score – at least – on a televised sports event? If you watched Monday Night Football up to the mid-1980s you had to wait for the game score to flash before a timeout or after a score. On Sunday’s other NFL action scores were pasted on the screen only during play stoppage or in slices of time where they did not interrupt action.
I crave information. Those days were like torture. I had friends who had two football games on small TVs tuned on Sundays so we didn’t miss any action.
The game’s luster in today’s presentation format is still as good as ever with all that info rolling at the bottom of my screen with all the reset information for the televised event I’m watching, and now, even won-loss records are superscripted in the corners of each team’s side of the reset core strip.
So, if you watch a game with me and tell me you don’t like all that stuff you see on the screen, you might hear me exclaim to you, “get off my lawn!”