Too Old for this Shit: The Diary of an Eldery Nerd
(Note: This is a repost of the original).
I believe the topic of aging has been brought up in this forum before. I myself turned 40 in October. I don’t feel aged. Apart from my asthma. Oh, and arthritic and gout ridden feet. and my back issues. But apart from that I am spry as can be.
On the way into work today, I stopped at a pedestrian crossing where a very attractive young lady in an extraordinarily tight shirt was crossing in front of me. And instead of appreciating this lovely young thing and her assets as God intended, my first thought was “Jesus Christ, Girl it’s minus seven put a damned coat on!”
Only later did it occur to me that my opportunity for my own patented brand of lechery had long since gone
(Side note, 40 year old men check out teenage girls. We can’t help it. It’s a biological imperative. It’s only creepy if you stare for too long, or approach the girl, or act on it in some other way. Or describe it in a public forum, like say, a comedy blog. ahem.)
When I thought about it some more, it occurred to me that I have been exhibiting behaviors attributed to the elderly for some time, and merely applying them to nerdy pursuits. I even have a pair of “Old man pants” which I used to wear to torment my wife, and now I wear because they are comfortable. Pissing her off is just kind of a bonus.
Some examples:
You know the old “We used to walk to school 5 miles to school, you kids today” shtick? I find myself doing that with Role Playing Games.
“You kids today and your World of Warcraft. When I was your age, and I wanted to pretend to be a dwarf, I’d use a little something called my IMAGINATION! You wanted to kill something? You rolled for it, on dice! I didn’t even HAVE a 12 sided dice. I used to roll 2 six sided dice. Didn’t have 20 sided dice either…used 4 six sided dice and everything over twenty was critical. Then when we DID get dice, you couldn’t read the damn things unless you colured em in with a CRAYON!! BY HAND!!! Didn’t have any fancy maps. Graph paper is what we had! What’s a character sheet? I created Eldwich The Winterborn on LOOSE LEAF!!! Painted his LEAD figure by HAND I did! You little punks.”
Then there was the release of the Tron Legacy Trailer which prompted me to run around the office squealing like a 13 year old girl at a Twilight convention. When asked why I was so uncharacteristically not impossible to be around, I told my boss about the upcoming Tron Sequel.
“What’s Tron?” She asked
I gasped.
Her office mate looked at me blankly and gave a shrug, as if to say “I too will register my complete ignorance of something that used to be awesome and therefore negate your relevance.”
The words “I can’t believe you have never heard of…” came to my lips, but I simply turned around and left before I made matters worse.
I’m hesitant to get an Iphone…because I’m worried about NOT BEING ABLE TO FIGURE IT OUT. I had trouble getting the voicemail up and running on my last phone…That’s the telecommunications equivalent of the Flashing 12:00 on the VCR our parents perpetually had.
My pet name for anyone under 20 is “Puke” as in “I don’t want to go to Subway for lunch, all the little pukes from the High school will be swarming the place” Doesn’t that sound like something Clint Eastwood would say in his Oscar winning movie about a grumpy old man who (Teaches someone to box, learns not to be a racist, whatever)?
The only reason I listen to Modern bands like Muse is because they remind me of significantly less modern bands like Queen and ELO. And even then I watch one of their videos and think “The lead singer was probably not alive when Raiders of the Lost Ark came out…much less Star Wars.”
That, by the way, is the great age line for nerds. It’s not B.C and A.D, it’s BSW and ASW. It counts off from 1977. Hence the following sentences
“Raiders of the lost Ark dates back to the year 3 ASW” or “2001 and was a great leap for special effects especially when you consider it was released way back in about 7 BSW”
I suppose someone with a toy shelf of epic proportions in both his home and work office, and eagerly awaits sequels to his favourite PS3 games can’t be all that out of touch, but be warned. The day will come when I will be in the old folks home laughing my ass off the first time you pukes catch yourself saying “When we went and saw Avatar, all we had was 3-d Imax, and we were happy to have it. You kids and your dumb, loud holgraphic piece of crap movies.”
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Comments (13)
spcMike said on 25-03-2010
spcMike
Wait, what’s a VCR?
Tbinns said on 25-03-2010
Tbinns
At least you didn’t ask what a DVD was.
spcMike said on 25-03-2010
spcMike
Though to be honest I was born only 6 years ASW (just in time for ROTJ).
By the way, what are those old people doing to each other?
The Boss said on 25-03-2010
The Boss
Crap, I still don’t know what Tron is!!
Tbinns said on 25-03-2010
Tbinns
Respectfully…If I were you…namely a Duran Duran fan, I would be more concerned about my own irrelevance rather than making fun of someone elses.
Wait, now that I’m thinking about it…How can you be a Duran Duran fan and NOT know what Tron is?
The Boss said on 25-03-2010
The Boss
I don’t even know how I can sleep at night…… PS Duran Duran has way more talent than those 4 bowl cut prefabbed band members a.k.a The Beatles!
It’s really too easy to get you riled up, it’s like taking candy from a baby 🙂
Tbinns said on 25-03-2010
Tbinns
Someone else want to Take this…? Ringo? Where are you buddy?
Ringo said on 25-03-2010
Ringo
I’m angered beyond the capacity for rational thought.
(And there is another cool reference you’ll never get)
Oh… another?
“You are going to die angry and miss everything cool.”
Peace &.. Nope.
I can’t do it because the Dude abides (yes, a reference to Jeff Bridges who was in the original Tron movie & will be back for the sequel – and we come full circle. TADA!!)
All right, Duran Duran versus the Beatles. Well, if you look at anyone’s (even Duran Duran’s) top anything list about anything, the Bealtes will occupy 5 of top 10. The Beatles are referenced when talking abut music. ALL MUSIC. Start off with Bach, Mozart, Stones, The Who… it doesn’t matter, the Beatles will come up and we will all sigh like we’ve just tasted a warm cup of compliment from our mothers. “You’re a very good boy, I’m proud of you”. Thanks Beatles & mom. Duran Duran gets mentioned right after the phrase like, “like, OMG, like, weren’t the 80 fucked up. Regan & spandex & valley girls and Duran Duran. Thank, like, jeebus (another cool reference) that’s over!!”. Timeless versus forgotten. Talent versus pants. Duran Duran can make us dance. Nice. The Beatles, to quote a friend of mine, had control of our smiles & our tears all those years ago AND they never let go. They effect us. The Beatles will never, ever stop being relevant. They were a small step for four young lads and a giant event for all mankind. Duran Duran is flattened, dirty unwanted popcorn on a theatre’s sticky floor, stepped on by the crowd that has already forgotten the film they just saw because they are rushing to get out as soon as the credits start. Yes, they must hurry to the nearest TV to find out what Radio ga… er, sorry, Lady Gaga is up too.
Beatles forever!
The Boss said on 26-03-2010
The Boss
Hi Trevor! I knew it was you at “like, OMG, like, weren’t the 80 fucked up. Regan & spandex & valley girls and Duran Duran”….great effort though 🙂
The office mate said on 25-03-2010
The office mate
Yeah, we still don’t know what Tron is… we couldn’t even bring ourselves to watch more than a few seconds of the clip he sent us.
NotVictoria said on 25-03-2010
NotVictoria
No you will be like a village elder…me and my other pukes would gladly sit in front of you and listen intently as you pass on the knowledge of when Sega made consoles and when the dark knight was once known as ”batman” who had a side kick names “robin”. We will marvel at these facts.
Cate said on 29-03-2010
Cate
Man, I love Tron, I can’t operate an iphone to save my life and I love ELO. You’re making me feel prematurely old…
Tomass said on 31-03-2010
Tomass
First the text on this site is too small.
Second, I don’t know what and ELO is. Is it like EMO and is EMO like Emu only new and what those god dam kids are into? Is it just a prefix thing the “E”? Like “i” is to Macintosh products.
And where the hells the Consumers Distributing catalog gone to? Bring it back!
“I use to be with it then they changed what it was. Now what it is strange and weird…” – Grandpa Simpson
