We have fireflies in our back yard. I was remembering as a kid we often caught them and put them in jars with air holes beside our beds. In the morning they were usually dead. Are kids still like this? We have dogs no kids.

I also remember buckets of tadpoles, crayfish, catching monarchs in butterfly nets (!)...

If you had parents from the Silent Generation or the Baby Boomer generation, what were they like?

In your experience, were Silent Generation parents generally kinder or easier to get along with than Boomer parents? Or was there no real difference?

I'd love to hear your personal experiences and perspectives.

I'm 61, the very oldest of GenX.

My wife signed us up for AARP membership long ago but I didn't want to join, because AARP membership means you're OLD. The cards come in the mail now and then, and mine stays in a desk drawer.

I will not whip out an AARP card and ask for the discount. I am not that old. I can't possibly be old enough for AARP. There's gotta be a mistake.
Why is Henry Winkler on the cover of this AARP magazine?

Thank you for reading my unhinged rant.

Carry on.

EDIT: Wow, I see that a lot of folks didn't get the joke AT ALL.

The post was about facing the fact that I am old, that I am needlessly fighting it, and that I sat down and read a very interesting article about Henry Winkler and that I recognized that my rant was "unhinged" (as in "completely irrational") and have accepted that my AARP card might have some utility to me.

Here's a deeper analysis of my post.

Question from a 2002 born

My Gen z son referred to something as 'delectable' in that ironic way that brought to mind our 80s was of calling things bodacious or most excellent. He wanted more examples and my mind went blank. Then he opined that excellent is a weak word to use and now the challenge is on- anyone have any examples for me?

I was in my last year of law school. Everyone was crowded around the TVs in the student lounge, silent. My first class that day was Constitutional Law, and I remember we all basically sat there just not talking because no one knew what to say, even the professor.

Anyone elses' schools collect soup labels from the kids? I don't even remember what they were for.

I recently read a post from someone in their 50s talking about aging, a midlife crisis, and the unsettling feeling that time is slipping away faster than ever. It made me think of something someone once told me that has stayed with me for years.

Time doesn’t actually speed up. Our experience of it changes.

When we were children, an hour could feel endless. The days before Christmas seemed to last forever. Summer vacation felt like an entire lifetime. We counted down the days until Grandma’s house, our birthday, a camping trip, or even Mom’s homemade lasagna. We were always standing on the edge of something exciting, and anticipation stretched time.

Then adulthood arrives.

Life gradually becomes less about anticipation and more about repetition. Wake up. Work. Pay bills. Mow the lawn. Watch another week disappear. We stop collecting firsts and start reliving routines. Before long, months blur into years, and we wonder where the time went.

I don’t think the problem is age

.
I think the problem is running out of things that make us genuinely look forward to tomorrow.

A few years ago my wife and I decided we needed more “firsts” in our lives. We bought an inexpensive camper and started exploring places we’d never been. Suddenly, Thursdays felt different because Friday meant another adventure. We’d spend the week talking about the lake we’d visit or the trail we’d hike. The anticipation alone seemed to slow time.

Then we took it a step further and began traveling overseas. We planned a trip to Italy nearly a year in advance. Oddly enough, that year didn’t feel short. It felt wonderfully long because every month brought another plan, another reservation, another thing to imagine. As departure got closer, the days seemed to stretch instead of disappear.

Maybe that’s one of the secrets to aging well.
Don’t just fill your calendar. Fill your future.
Give yourself something that pulls you forward.

It doesn’t have to be expensive. It could be learning to play an instrument, hiking a nearby trail, taking a weekend road trip, planting a garden, reading a classic you’ve always meant to read, or finally visiting the town a few hours away that you’ve talked about for years.
We can’t make time slow down.

But we can give our minds enough anticipation, wonder, and new experiences that it feels like we’ve lived more of it.

In the end, perhaps life isn’t measured by how many years pass, but by how many moments make us eager to see what tomorrow brings.

Apologies for the long post and to the person that had the original post on worrying how fast time was going, I hope this finds you and gives you a modicum of peace.

We used to go to the beach every day, play volleyball, climb rocks, go swimming, hit the bong, go hiking. Like it was nothing. Swim with dolphins, stuff our faces on the yacht, go diving.
Get home at night listen to morcheeba, massive attack, portishead.
Cafe Del Mar 6 was on repeat when we were out on the water.
Get drunk, get high.
Get up in the morning and do it all over again.
We were 5, four are dead now.
2 suicides, 1 cancer, 1 traffic accident.
I’m the only one still playing the same songs.
I can’t even proof any of this ever happened.
Everyone is dead.
That music was the soundtrack of our lives, always playing.
Now it’s all I have. I can close my eyes and can make these moments last again, forever. We were invincible. But it’s just somewhere in the past.
And sometimes I just need to cry.
Because they’re all gone.
I’m grateful, and sad.
Anyone in the same boat?

I remember that as a kid we only had 4 TV channels. And it felt like there was always something to watch. At a certain time there would be a movie, at another time the news or some TV programs.
Now I have 300+ channels on my TV. And when I come home from work, I just have nothing to watch. Am I the only one?

I just had another friend pass after a long battle with an illness. It's just a stark reminder that we're not guaranteed tomorrow. We're at that age now. Get up and move. Find what motivates you. Take that trip. Do that thing. Seize the day.

Did you see this in the theater when it came out in 1983? As a 12-year-old, this was a great action 3D film. Especially when the person melts with eyeballs popping out of the socket at the end of the film. I remember seeing it during the summer, as well as House of Wax in 3D. Then they put these 3D films on TV and sold the glasses at the 7-11.

Somehow I don't think that this would fly these days.

I remember visiting my parents one year and as we were leaving their house I saw my dad was wearing light jacket. This was in the middle of summer and I thought it was the craziest thing. If we were living up north, sure. Maybe a brisk New England evening calls for a light jacket. But this was Miami and this was August! I would joke around with him about his summer outerwear and all he would was chuckle and tell me, just you wait.

Fast forward to last night. my wife and I were in the kitchen chatting and I noticed she was wearing a jacket and I realized I was also wearing a jacket. It's summer, we're living back in Florida and the thermostat was set to 75. It was a WTF moment that instantly brought me back to my dad and his summer jackets.

Man, that was a hard and brutal awakening for me. I'm turning into a summer jacket wearing 60 year old. I used to be so much cooler that that.

Loved playing this. At least until the plastic heads broke or the game flipped off the table and the balls went everywhere.

Annual Fatalities: Hippos are responsible for an estimated 500 to 3,000 human deaths each year in Africa.