Attention Signs you're getting old.

[me203]

Then, there are the memories where they rang up sales manually in every store.

I remember kids talk about scanning systems in elementary school, but I never saw a store with that until a new grocery store opened near my home, possibly about 1980.

I also remember my parents shopping a cheap grocery store where individual items didn't have price tags. Customers would get some marker thing coming in, and write the prices on the things they took off the shelves.

 

[Norri]

And meanwhile, customers of that era had the skills to know they were getting the right change.

I stopped using cash in grocery stores because after all my items have been scanned the cashier, if they are under 40, just turns their back on me because their work is done and I’m supposed to use my credit card. I can’t do anything about being old but I can do something about being annoying so I now use my card but I do miss them struggling to count out the correct change especially when the look at the register a second time to make sure they got it right.

 

[backagain]

^ That is if they can count. I purchased an item that cost $1.84, I handed the cashier $20 but punched in $2.00, the cashier gave me 16 cents, then pulled out their cell phone to use the calculator app to figure out the rest of the change. I was thinking... REALLY.

 

[Vannie]

So I have another birthday in approximately 6 months.

So I was thinking that I should make these last 6 months at 61 years old the best they can be. Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't dwell on thing's you cannot change. Don't let other people's negativity bother me. All that kinda stuff

There's just one problem with all this.


I'm already 62. I didn't know.

 

[me203]

So I have another birthday in approximately 6 months.

What? You just had one about 6 months ago. Birthday hog!

 

[me203]

So I was thinking that I should make these last 6 months at 61 years old the best they can be.

There's just one problem with all this.


I'm already 62. I didn't know.

Maybe you could say your performance the year you were 61 was such that you needed to repeat the year! Sort of like third grade for the second time.

 

[jjonn3]

A number of years back, I often bought single bottles of beer to try. Usually no problem, but sometimes the bar code on the bottle wasn't in the system, so the cashier would have manually enter a price based on the 6 pack price. One time, the cashier actually pulled out a calculator in order to do the higher math required to figure out what one bottle from a 6 pack priced at $6 might run.

I was once helping out at a sale - everything was half price.

All of the "kids" (college age) were using a calculator to figure out the price.

Myself and one other person around my age would look and say "$9.99 each and you have 3 so that is $30 so half price is $15" The kids calculator would try and correct us and say that the total is $14.99. But they would take 5 minutes to do a transaction were were doing in a minute.

 

[Thad1527]

I approve of math skills for all.
But I think you're really old if you think learning cursive writing is important.
Maybe historians need to learn it so historical documents aren't lost. But nobody else in the 21st century actually needs it.

 

[PalacePaul]

I approve of math skills for all.
But I think you're really old if you think learning cursive writing is important.
Maybe historians need to learn it so historical documents aren't lost. But nobody else in the 21st century actually needs it.

Then I'm officially old

 

[Thad1527]

Maybe just a historian.
Or someone who appreciates the old ways.

 

[Kahaih]

I wonder if a senile old bastard might forget that he's already posted in this thread -- several times.

​

Just yankin' it ​

 

[smokeshadow]

I approve of math skills for all.
But I think you're really old if you think learning cursive writing is important.
Maybe historians need to learn it so historical documents aren't lost. But nobody else in the 21st century actually needs it.

unfortunately, it's those historians who are clammoring for helpers who not only can write cursive; but, can read it as well. Age and eyesight failures require the young to help with history

Not only that; but, digital history, i.e e-mails that soldiers on the 21st century battlefield have sent back home to loved ones are not surviving nearly as long as the cursively written letters mailed to loved ones from Gettsyburg

 

[purina]

Having to spread your saggy cheeks before you make contact with the toilet seat.

 

[me203]

I think being able to read cursive--at least on a basic level--can be useful. I'm not sure what the fuss is with people unable to read it, but it may simply be my age. Cursive was taught (although those who've seen my cursive might well wonder who taught me and why didn't they do a better job ) and it was something I saw often enough.

As for using it, it was optional a long time. Because my writing was so bad, I switched back to printing when I was in hell high school. I was not alone--a professor my family knew lamented to me once about his students using printing, not cursive.

I notice some people in my family of my parents' generation noe use printing on greeting cards or notes. Maybe partly conditioned by the youngest generation, which might not know cursive? Although I think my father--who needed to use pen and paper a lot for his work--used printing a lot for years.

Arguments that cursive shouldn't be taught aren't new. I remember seeing a book on education that mapped out the author's thoughts of what education should be indicated a feeling that cursive should be abandoned. I saw that 35-plus years ago, and the book was more than 10 years old then.

Meanwhile, on the other hand, I've heard arguments that learning cursive may have value past being able to read or write cursive.

Oddly, though, I've started using cursive again... A lot may because I started using a fountain pen again. There are arguments that ballpoints helped kill cursive, and I think there may be some merit to that. I can say I think my writing is neater than I think I obtained with pencils and ballpoints when in school, but there are probably other factors, too (I'm more likely to take time and care now--back then, I wanted the day's busy work assignment done ASAP).

 

[fredroy]

I don't write in the cursive I was taught. And I'm happy I was taught. I have melted my cursive into my printing.
That is, I don't make the capital letter T looking like a fucking swan. And my s looks like an s and not that hunchback thing I was taught.

 

[me203]

Not only that; but, digital history, i.e e-mails that soldiers on the 21st century battlefield have sent back home to loved ones are not surviving nearly as long as the cursively written letters mailed to loved ones from Gettsyburg

I think I remember cracks in the 80s that one day that instead of books of people's collected letters, we'd have books reproducing peoples pink while you were out call slips.

I saw an interview with David McCullough in California Typewriter that mentioned the huge loss it will be for future historians who won't have the papers that historians have for past eras.

Not that our civilization has a future to worry about.

 

[smokeshadow]

my late father, who had an industrial arts degree from college, worked as an architectural draftsman for most of his career, first with the local Vermont Marble Company as one of their designers (think bathrooms, entry flooring, fireplace surrounds); and, then as a industrial draftsman for the city water department. Because all of his lettering was printed, his cursive handwriting was simply his printed letters connected; and, as he aged, the handwriting became more and more unlegible. Myself, on the other hand, as an architect never went through that issue. Untin the mid 1980's, when CADD came on the scene, all of our work on the boards was hand printed lettering. But, I maintained my cursive writing as a seperate entity from my hand lettering.

 

[Rickrock]

How long does it take to print a paragraph versus how long does it take to cursive write a paragraph? I think it takes me longer to print it. That is one reason to keep cursive.

 

[backagain]

So I have another birthday in approximately 6 months.

So I was thinking that I should make these last 6 months at 61 years old the best they can be. Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't dwell on thing's you cannot change. Don't let other people's negativity bother me. All that kinda stuff

There's just one problem with all this.


I'm already 62. I didn't know.

Gives new meaning to older and wiser.

 

[pornoboy]

​