Boomers.Lets say you went into a Rip Van Winkle sleep/coma in 1976 ...

[maveric]

and woke up today.
What would facinate you, enrage you and confuse you about the times we now live in?
Perhaps we can get a Screenplay written here?

[Patiod]

1. Cell phones and laptops are the most shocking

Answering machines - all the communications changes.

Plus I'd have to ask the same question George Carlin asks: when did America get so dehydrated? Everyone with a cell phone in one ear, and a bottled water or coffee in the other.

As a woman, I'd also be surprised that some clothing was EXACTLY THE SAME - girls with long straight hair, wedgie shoes that tie up the leg, hiphuggers, and shaggy hair coming back on young guys.

But on the other hand, I'd be horrified by the prison/hiphop look, and the stupid Peewee Herman crew cut brushed forward and waxed up that some guys still wear.

[hedgehog]

3. Ageed - people behave as if a drive to work was a desert crossing!

People never seem to stop eating any more, either.

[cobalt1999]

2. I'd be shocked that the same music is still on the radio

Haven't they recorded any new songs!?! (all the classic rock stations).
I'd be bummed about all these new incurable STDs. - Herpes? AIDS? You mean you can DIE from sex!?!
I'd be impressed with the car mileage. In 76 my car would go 175 miles on a tank (and it was a LARGE tank).
I'd love the increase in speed limits. No more 55? Woohoo!
I'd be shocked at the size of new homes. In 76 the good neighborhoods in my town, are now the middle class homes.
I'd be overwhelmed at the superstores. What's a Walmart or Home Depot? What was wrong with the local hardware store?
I'd be enraged about being in a new war. Jeez, wasn't Vietnam just yesterday?

Well, at least the democratic party is still dysfunctional!

[grannylib]

4. The computers in use would fascincate me...when I took an intro class

in high school, you had to literally DIAL IN and place the phone headset into a cradle to connect to the big 'puter at the local college, and it was all about writing shit like "run this" and "kill that" and it was HORRIBLE!
SO not user-friendly!

The cell phone thing is odd too...
Hell, my grandkids are 10 and 11 and they each have their own...

I'd also be disgusted to wake up and find that we have made SO little progress, relatively speaking, towards less dependence on petroleum products and towards more renewable energy.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. My list would be similar

I'd be surprised at people owning individual computers, especially laptops, since I would have gone to sleep in a time when there were just mainframes with terminals that you had to buy time on. I would also be astonished at the user-friendliness, because I would have been most familiar with the type of computers that require programs to be on piles of punch cards.

The common use of computers for word processing would also be a surprise. I would have gone to sleep thinking that the IBM Selectric was the ultimate in writing tools.

The Internet would flabbergast me.

"The Berlin Wall is gone? China is capitalist? The Soviet Union has split up?"

I would also be happy to see more people of color in white collar and professional jobs and more GLBT people out of the closet

"Wow, you can get cappuccinos even in cities that don't have large Italian populations!"

"Who ever heard of a Vietnamese or Ethiopian restaurant?"

"You mean I can record TV programs that I'm not home to watch and rent movies to take home and play on a $40 machine?"

I would be dismayed at:

1) The proliferation of SUVs, given that in 1976, the oil crisis was making small cars popular.
2) Learning about how Reagan and the Bushes had undone most of the gains of the 1960s and 1970s
3) The way that cable TV has led not to more choice and more intelligent programming but to 200 channels of mostly idiocy
4) The relentlessness of suburban sprawl. (Moving back to Minnesota after 19 years, I saw how once quaint little country towns have been swallowed up by the McMansions and the big box stores)
5) The increased power of the fundamentalists of all stripes
6) The increase in public vulgarity, angry snarkiness, vandalism, the "whatever!" attitude, and just plain bad manners
7) The maintenance of the world's largest military force by far despite the lack of any enemies who would actually be effectively handled by such a force as opposed to by other methods
8) Conservative young people
9) The deterioration in standards of service and comfort in the airline industry
10) The loss of art and music instruction in many public schools and the budget cuts that keep public libraries closed part of the week
11) The way that cell phones, despite their conveniences, have given annoyingly loud people more reasons to be annoyingly loud
12) High prices for housing and medical care

On the whole, I'd probably want to go back to sleep. :-)

[MichiganVote]

5. Horrors? Price of gas of course. Fascinate? technology

[IowaGuy]

7. homogenization of America....

there used to be neighborhoods...could tell the difference between Ohio and Missouri and California...now it's all one long freeway/strip mall w/ big box Wal-Marts. etc...you can be anywhere in the US and eat @ TGIF\Applebees\Lone Star, etc. etc.....boring...

Cable\Satellite TV...so many choices...so much crap

How our generation overwhelmed others in terms of culture\dress...girls today wearing what they did when I was in HS...my kids listening to the same music I did.....not fair...they should have their own - it's their duty to irritate me...

What a shock...the middle east is still a mess...same rhetoric....same blood...same insanity....

You mean the whole world didn't turn Commie because we got out of Viet Nam? but, but,...we were the worlds last hope to stop the evil scourge there...

Oh...we managed to lead normal lives and actually extend Civil rights to more of our citizenry back then, despite facing the huge war machines and nuclear ICBM's of the USSR & China.....but now that some ragheads got some boxcutters, we must be very, very scared and imprison ourselves in our own fear so that we can be safe...

[wildhorses]

8. you say gas is HOW MUCH??!?!?

no fucking WAY, man:wow:

[Courtesy Flush]

9. My long white beard

That plus the fact that I went to sleep while I was still a virgin, and now here I am -- 46 years old, and never had any.

I'd have to shave and find the nearest disco.

[Patiod]

10. One nice thing - everyone isn't smoking everywhere anymore

You used to be able to smoke in hospitals, offices, classrooms, airplanes - I am so happy you can't do that anymore. I do think you ought to be able to smoke in bars and that there should be a designated place inside airport security to smoke - but otherwise, restrictions have made daily life much pleasanter.

Also, kids seem a lot less racist and self-segregated than we were at their age (which isn't saying much, I admit)


On the downside, the gap between rich and poor has widened - you used to be able to survive on one blue collar job, but no longer, unless you're one of the diminishing number who still have union jobs.

And in 1976, you could stroll into your local airport and meet your family at the gate as they got off the plane. Your family, which had arrived at the airport about 15 minutes before their flight. Ha!

And even though I'm one of the last holdouts, everyone else seems to pay for the priveledge of watching TV these days - basic OR premium channels. Comaboy would surely find that appalling.

[ikojo]

11. I was 13 in 1976 and still into gadgets

although there weren't as many then as there are now. I'd be most fascinated by cell phones because I was a Star Trek FANATIC and cell phones most closely resemble the communicator (and I believe that was by design).

[rug]

12. Muslims have replaced Communists?

:wtf:

[yellowdogintexas]

13. let me get this straight: we elected REAGAN????

then his veep, then impeached a president over an extramarital affair and then (s)elected the idiot son of the aforementioned veep....we're getting older but not wiser that's for sure.