Describe your family’s first TV set.
a. It was a huge wooden cabinet with two big knobs and a teensy screen
featuring a black-and-white picture that I rarely saw because my dad
was always standing in front of it adjusting the rabbit-ear antenna
and saying bad words.
b. It was a Sony.
Who was featured on your first lunchbox?
a. Davy Crockett.
b. Vanilla Ice.
Do you remember Howdy Doody? a. Of course.
b.You are making that name up.
4. Who was the first living U.S. president
whom you were aware of? a. Harry Truman.
b. Vanilla Ice.
Did you ever, personally, own a 78 r.p.m.
record? a. Yes
b. A what?
Did you, later on, own a whole batch of 45
r.p.m. records that you wrote your name on the labels of and kept in
a carrying case that had a handle? And you put little plastic inserts
in the holes?
a. Yes.
b. Why did you need little plastic inserts for the holes?
Have you ever thought that Beavis and Butt-Head
is funny?
a. No.
b. Yes, I am always amused when they burp and go heheheheheh.
Do you remember when there were no area codes?
And there was only one gigantic Soviet Unionstyle telephone company?
And all the phones were black and they belonged to the phone company
and if you wanted to get a new one you had to wait in your house like
a prisoner for days at a time until the phone company, taking its sweet
time, decided to install one, as opposed to now, when they sell telephones
at drugstores, as if they were breath mints? And do you remember a time
when you weren’t incessantly bombarded with advertising about your
long-distance options, because there WEREN’T any long-distance
options? And phone numbers had letters at the beginning, reflecting
your area of residence, such as (in my personal case) ARmonk 3, 3119,
which made the numbers easier to remember? Do you think that one reason
why children today can’t remember their multiplication tables is
that they have to remember seven-digit phone numbers for their homes,
plus their parents’ cell phones and beepers; not to mention their
home alarm codes and various random PIN numbers; on top of which somebody–possibly
hostile space aliens–keeps adding NEW area codes every other week,
so that some day we’re going to have a separate area code for every
single household in America and our brains will be so full of numbers
that one day our skulls will start spontaneously exploding and people
will try to call for help but they won’t be able to remember the
seventeen-digit number that will no doubt soon replace 911?
a. Yes.
b. You’re saying there didn’t used to be area codes?
Do you remember when pop singing stars with
major hit records would go on TV shows–most notably Dick Clark’s
American Bandstand–and the teenagers (the girls wearing sweaters;
the boys wearing skinny ties) would dance the Stroll while the stars
would lip-synch their records hilariously badly, as though they were
hearing the songs for the first time?
a. Yes.
b. Dick Clark? The sweepstakes guy?
Did you ever do the Slop?
a. Of course.
b. The what?
Did you ever do the Humpty Dance?
a. The what?
b. Of course.
Do you remember when “boss” was
a popular slang term denoting approval, as in “Duane got a boss
GTO”?
a. Yes.
b. That is pathetic.
Who was Winky Dink?
a. A cartoon character that you got out of trouble by drawing lines
on a plastic thing you put on your TV screen.
b. I’ll agree with “a” on this one.
c. Hey! That’s cheating!
Where were you the first time you heard the
Beatles?
a. In a station wagon.
b. In a fallopian tube.
Did you ever experiment with drugs?
a. No.
b. No.
Count the number of “a” answers,
then refer to the following handy chart:
Your Score
How Old You Are
You can ignore this. This is just
a joke based on using unreadably small type.
There will probably be a lot of
them in this book. Let’s hope I eventually get bored with this
idea
