About the same age--as lnhammer occasionally likes to reminds people who start going on about Kids These Days--that we were at D-Day. :-) (Another event that everyone is--or was--sort of expected to have a personal connection to.)
I think I like the moon landing better than either of those.
Yes! :-)
I never thought before about how so many of those "I'll always remember where I was" moments were negatives, rather than positives. Interesting that the moon landing is one of the few exceptions.
ETA: Okay, wait, for a positive I actually do actually remember, there's the collapse of the Berlin Wall ...
The Berlin Wall collapsing always seems like an event which I should have been alive for, but nope, I was born two years later.
I was one of the first post-Cold War kids, though. That's something, I suppose--I was about five months old when the USSR was officially disbanded. (Though it makes my tolerance for Cold War history rather low. I want to go back and tell everyone to stop posturing, already.)
I think being post-cold-war is an excellent thing to be, personally. But maybe that's because I can't say it's an era I particularly miss, myself.
(Though it makes my tolerance for Cold War history rather low. I want to go back and tell everyone to stop posturing, already.)
And that's fascinating, because it comes so close to how I've often felt about baby boomers talking about the 60s (which I effectively just barely missed)--felt for a while like I'd spent my whole life hearing about how things were ever so much better in this time I'd just missed than they ever would be again ...
To me, there's this sort of divide between what people alive today were around to experience and what they weren't. D-Day is very rapidly fading into that latter category. (Though, from my personal point of view, D-Day wasn't that important in my history, as none of my family fought in the war. My grandfather, though, was involved at a very young age in the Spanish Civil War (on the Republican side, I am proud to say (and by Republican, we mean the leftist coalition that opposed the fascists, and nothing to do with the modern American Republican party). He was a secretary for a high-ranking colonel, with the typing skills he picked up from being trained as an accountant keeping him at a desk job and safely out of the actual fighting until the very end. He died a few years ago, and that age moved from "contemporary" to "history" for me.)
It's funny what a difference a few years makes, though. Take the recent hullabaloo about the death of Michael Jackson and so many people being worked up about it, but I'd be hard pressed to name three of his songs, much less recognize them. To some extent, I've never cared much for pop music, but I think that people just a bit older than me were having their formative teen years that set their tastes at the time when he was popular instead of a washed-up has-been. Just missing that window makes for a huge difference in perspective.
(Oh, and -10 for me, to within a week, as I just hit 30 and must now practice distrusting you young folks instead of distrusting old folks. All I need is a lawn, to yell at kids to get off it!)
For some reason a lot of my friends from high school--so, 16/17/18-year-olds--got really worked up over his death, too. But yes, there definitely is a generational aspect in there, and it is a pretty fine line sometimes. Harry Potter fandom seems to work sort of like that too, though I'm still struggling with how to define it exactly.
(For a long time in school they didn't teach us about the Spanish Civil War, I guess because we were too young and innocent or something, but since hearing about it I have been fascinated with it. But it has always been 'history' for me. Then again, my grandparents have never been ones to tell stories about their past, so my personal line is drawn closer to things that my parents experienced.)
It probably also helps that I've seen a fair number of movies set during the Spanish Civil War, which makes the era seem much more real. (In truth, it seems like a positively absurd war, with people going home for lunch breaks during the first few months of it. I guess it just takes a while for it to sink in that your neighbors and coworkers are trying to kill you. Given that it was a class-based conflict as opposed to a regional conflict like the US civil war just made it uglier.)
In retrospect, I realize that my grandfather never really talked much about it, and all the stories I have are secondhand from my father. It still gives me a different perspective, though. When watching Pan's Labyrinth, I had an immediate and visceral hatred of the villainous colonel--these were the assholes that had tried to kill my grandfather, and I take great umbrage at attempts to delete my timeline.
Mm. I wrote all of the papers I wrote because I'd seen Pan's Labyrinth. We did study that war in general but I learned a lot more about it than any of my classmates.
That is awesome about your grandfather. I wrote many papers on the Spanish Civil War in history my senior year of high school.
My father's father was probably doing something political and laywer-y at the time (he ran for state representative? I think and did other such things. He's a democrat.) My mother's father was being a surgeon in WWII.
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aamcnamara) wrote2009-07-20 04:05 pm
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Of course, for my generation it'll probably end up being 9-11.
I think I like the moon landing better than either of those.
no subject
Yes! :-)
I never thought before about how so many of those "I'll always remember where I was" moments were negatives, rather than positives. Interesting that the moon landing is one of the few exceptions.
ETA: Okay, wait, for a positive I actually do actually remember, there's the collapse of the Berlin Wall ...
no subject
I was one of the first post-Cold War kids, though. That's something, I suppose--I was about five months old when the USSR was officially disbanded. (Though it makes my tolerance for Cold War history rather low. I want to go back and tell everyone to stop posturing, already.)
no subject
(Though it makes my tolerance for Cold War history rather low. I want to go back and tell everyone to stop posturing, already.)
And that's fascinating, because it comes so close to how I've often felt about baby boomers talking about the 60s (which I effectively just barely missed)--felt for a while like I'd spent my whole life hearing about how things were ever so much better in this time I'd just missed than they ever would be again ...
no subject
It's funny what a difference a few years makes, though. Take the recent hullabaloo about the death of Michael Jackson and so many people being worked up about it, but I'd be hard pressed to name three of his songs, much less recognize them. To some extent, I've never cared much for pop music, but I think that people just a bit older than me were having their formative teen years that set their tastes at the time when he was popular instead of a washed-up has-been. Just missing that window makes for a huge difference in perspective.
(Oh, and -10 for me, to within a week, as I just hit 30 and must now practice distrusting you young folks instead of distrusting old folks. All I need is a lawn, to yell at kids to get off it!)
no subject
For some reason a lot of my friends from high school--so, 16/17/18-year-olds--got really worked up over his death, too. But yes, there definitely is a generational aspect in there, and it is a pretty fine line sometimes. Harry Potter fandom seems to work sort of like that too, though I'm still struggling with how to define it exactly.
(For a long time in school they didn't teach us about the Spanish Civil War, I guess because we were too young and innocent or something, but since hearing about it I have been fascinated with it. But it has always been 'history' for me. Then again, my grandparents have never been ones to tell stories about their past, so my personal line is drawn closer to things that my parents experienced.)
no subject
In retrospect, I realize that my grandfather never really talked much about it, and all the stories I have are secondhand from my father. It still gives me a different perspective, though. When watching Pan's Labyrinth, I had an immediate and visceral hatred of the villainous colonel--these were the assholes that had tried to kill my grandfather, and I take great umbrage at attempts to delete my timeline.
no subject
no subject
My father's father was probably doing something political and laywer-y at the time (he ran for state representative? I think and did other such things. He's a democrat.) My mother's father was being a surgeon in WWII.