By Cindy Phillips updated Wed, Feb 8, 2012 12:08 PM
A friend recently compared getting old to a roll of toilet paper – the closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes. What a wonderful analogy about how time is literally running out for some of us. And now to add insult to injury, we have the new and improved tubeless toilet paper. So for we oldies but goodies who choose to utilize this analogy, we are now left without that little cardboard center to place on our lips and toot Reveille as a pronouncement that we were, indeed, here.
My daughters have been no help whatsoever in stopping this runaway train. They choose to keep getting older as well, which means I have no choice but to keep up with them. The older one had the audacity to hit 30 last year, and her younger sister is threatening to close in on the same milestone in less than two years. I raised them to have better respect for their elders than this.
And to top it off, the older one also took the liberty of making me a grandma! Oh, the humanity.
Though I am obviously being facetious, it truly is mind-boggling to realize that it was over 30 years ago that I labored for 24 hours and finally pushed out our little bundle of joy just an hour and a half before the start of Easter Sunday. I have an equally hard time comprehending that it was almost 29 years ago that I again found myself in labor and delivery. The second time around as a wiser (yeah, right) woman, I chose natural childbirth. It still seems like yesterday that after four painful hours of pushing, my little angel’s head appeared and I breathed a sigh of relief only to have the doctor burst my bubble by announcing it was now time to work on the shoulders! I was definitely absent the day we covered that in Lamaze class.
My point is that we baby boomers can vividly remember some pivotal life events, but we cringe when we realize how long ago they actually occurred. We simply cannot wrap our head around the fact that so much time has passed. Where did that time go?
It has been over 50 years since Alan Shepard became the first American to reach space when he launched on a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961. On a similar note, it was over 25 years ago that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after lifting off from launch pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Did you attend Woodstock? If you did, it was over 40 years ago that you slept in the mud with a half million of your closest friends listening to the performances of some of the most fantastic musicians ever assembled.
It’s been almost 34 years since Louise Joy Brown, the world’s first successful “test-tube” baby, was born in Great Britain. An unbelievable scientific advancement, this technique is today a common procedure.
Do you remember the mood ring? Yeah, it’s been around for almost 40 years. For some reason, mine always seemed to turn black.
Here’s one for you – who remembers Peter Lemongello? He was the first singer to sell over one million albums via television commercials. A virtual unknown, he launched an unprecedented TV ad campaign, saturating the New York television market with over 100 commercials per week to sell his Love 76 Mood-Rock album directly to the public. That was 36 years ago and also the same year I graduated college. Yikes. Of course it was such a silly idea. Everyone knows you can’t make money selling things on television these days. That home shopping network is just a fad.
I was reminiscing with a friend recently about the first time we watched Saturday Night Live. We had never seen anything like it, and when it was over, we couldn’t wait until the following Saturday to see it again. That was 37 years ago. We also discussed his platform shoes.
It was a mere 42 years ago that a stamp cost six cents, gas was 36 cents a gallon and a dozen eggs set you back a mere 62 cents.
Time is flying faster than a speeding bullet, and it isn’t always fun. But there is nothing I can do to stop it, so I am planning to enjoy the rest of the ride, however long that may be. But for heaven’s sake, when my time is up, someone please put that cardboard tube to their lips and play Reveille in my honor.
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