Geezer Test

[footfootfoot]

Didn't know this was here. I got a 16. I'm geezeresque. We still had a lot of this in the 60's and my dad and aunts talked a lot about the depression and WWII. Also, I read the time–life "this fabulous century" books over and over.

yeah, that's the ticket.

I know I pretty much suck at pop culture.

[capnhowdy]

I've been continuously amazed at the scores. I reckon the geezer test scores aren't really based on one's age, but how well we retain information. A lot of the questions I got right were not from experience, but from other folks' experiences that they had shared with me as a young man.

I still think the only way you can walk for miles to school UPHILL BOTH WAYS is to live in two separate places and have an evening chauffer.

[BigV]

What if your home and your school are on different hills two miles apart?

[capnhowdy]

you would only walk HALFWAY to school uphill both ways.

[FloridaDragon]

yeah!! I only knew 10 (and actually guessed a couple of those) ... I am not an old geezer like the rest of you!!

[xoxoxoBruce]

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning …… uphill BOTH ways .. through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs .....
to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a Straight-A average, despite their full- time, after-school job at the local textile mill .... where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But…….

Now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter ….with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

And talk of about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked!
Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!
And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! ... Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little bastards!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up .. we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire. imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot. That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled.
You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980.

[Sundae]

Standing ovation!

[mrnoodle]

awesome, xoB

That reminded me of something from my wee small days, though. We didn't even have a phone line to ourselves. It was a party line. And the woman we shared it with (who lived about 2 doors down, IIRC -- but I was young) would get calls at ALL HOURS of the night. And whenever you wanted to use the phone, she would be on it. And she'd get all huffy when you asked her to let you use it.

Wow. Thanks for the weird deja vu moment, dude.

[glatt]

Cool! I forgot that we had a party line when I was a kid too.

We were lucky, because the people we shared it with were never on the phone. I only remember a handful of times that I picked up the phone when someone else was using it.

My parent held on to that party line for as long as they could. The other parties on their party line went and got their own private lines, and my parents ended up paying the lower party line rate while having a private line. They did this for years, until some change in phone regulations allowed the phone company to drop them from that plan.

[MaggieL]

I would have had a 20, but I simply skipped over 13 somehow; didn't answer it at all. True geezerness. I agree that the questions pretty much tested knowlege about the '60s.

[Tonchi]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

I agree that the questions pretty much tested knowlege about the '60s.

You meant to say "the PEOPLE in their 60'S" A lot of those questions were about life in the late 1940 and early '50s.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by glatt

My parent held on to that party line for as long as they could. The other parties on their party line went and got their own private lines, and my parents ended up paying the lower party line rate while having a private line. They did this for years, until some change in phone regulations allowed the phone company to drop them from that plan.

We lost the party line when they went to dial phones but that may be because it was a small town.

[Elspode]

MaggieL! Wow! Long time no post!

[xoxoxoBruce]

You just missed her here

[footfootfoot]

OK bruce, post#36, did you pen that and how did I get a version of it ascribed to mickey rooney, of all people, in my email from my dad last month?

I had a party line whern I lived in VT in the late 70's early 80's. We also only had to dial the last 4 digits of the phone # if we were calling within the same prefix.