Redartz: Good day, everyone. Most of us who share a presence (whether actively participating or following along) here have numerous things in common. One factor which we probably all are experiencing is a transition from 'middle age' to...well.....let's just say 'veteran' status. If we're not undergoing it now, we will be before too many years pass. I certainly am, breaking the '60' barrier this year. It got me thinking about other transitions we make in our lives, particularly from childhood to adolescence. For instance, can you recall when you were little, and your parents made the choices about what movies you saw, or what tv shows the family viewed each night? When I was a kid, that was just 'the way it was'. It never really occurred to me to think otherwise, until I got a bit older. It was about the age of 8 when the first crack appeared in my parental wall: my folks allowed me to pick out my own comics (superhero books, that is; they had no problem with me reading Casper).
But it was a couple more years before my siblings and I were able to assert any decision-making about the tv. By the time I was 10 we could, at least, take over the set for Friday night ( Brady Bunch, Partridge Family and the ABC lineup). At this point I was becoming aware that my entertainment choices weren't always matching up with everyone elses'.
The final brick in the wall broke away when I was 15; the first time I was allowed to pick a movie to watch without supervision. We were at a motel on vacation, and we had two rooms. My folks gave the ok, and I watched my first 'R' film (actually, practically the first movie I'd seen that wasn't a Disney film): "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Boy, that was a departure from "The Apple Dumpling Gang"!
So that made my departure from childhood complete. I never really recognized the transition, but was aware of a changing of interests (including an increasing attraction to the girls around school; as of 7th. grade). Therefore my personal 'transition' probably ran from age ten to twelve. Guess I was pretty much on schedule.
How about you? Were you conscious of a shift away from your childhood pursuits? Do you recall when you were allowed the occasional entertainment choice? And was I the only one still watching Disney flicks at 14? Go ahead and 'chew the fat'...
11 comments:
My sister and I had to be in bed by 9pm if the following day was a school day but that's the only rule I can remember. As far as TV was concerned I was pretty much allowed to watch anything, no matter how scary it was. I started watching Dr.Who around the age of 3 and that show could be quite scary, especially for a toddler, but I was allowed to watch it. I can also recall watching dramas meant for adults when I was only 6 or 7 but again I was allowed to watch them.
For me the first obvious transition came when I discovered Marvel comics at age 8 - they were a big change from the kiddie comics I'd been reading beforehand.
And the second big transition came, aged 13, when I persuaded my father to buy me a black & white portable TV for my bedroom. Having my own TV was a huge event and I can remember the exact date the TV was delivered - Wednesday, June 13th 1979.
I remember being profoundly interested the first time I experienced one decade ending and another beginning. I was 8 in 1969 , and as the year was coming to a close, I started wondering what that would feel like. It wasn’t like I had any kind of ‘macro’ view of things — I was only vaguely aware that the 60s were THÉ SIXTIES, thé decade of ‘Camelot/Civil Rights/Vietnam/Hippies’ etc. — but I thought that once the clock clicked over to January 1, 1970, everything would suddenly be different somehow.
And of course, it didn’t happen like that. Whatever changes happened in 1970 and beyond, happened gradually. But I think i started paying a little more attention to things. In World events, pop culture, etc. For whatever reason, I still, to this day, think of 1970 as some kind of important turning point, even though I know logically that it wasn’t really. Everything that happened before that was somehow The ‘Old Days’.
Fashion-wise, I do remember what a seismic shift it seemed when my parents allowed my brothers and I to grow our hair long. And that first pair of flare-legged jeans (they were green). Ha, and The Beatles breaking up was definitely one of those ‘What Is Happening?!’ things.
-b.t.
I loved being a teenager. It wasn’t so much that I was ‘putting away childish things’. Having a part-time job, my driver’s license and access to my mom’s car mostly meant that I had more money to spend on comics and books and records and could expand my shopping horizons. But even though I was still in a High School and living with my parents, I was aware of at least FEELING more like a ‘Grown-Up’ when I could put on nicer clothes, drive over to my girlfriend’s house and take her out to dinner and a movie. In reality, I avoided the responsibilities of being an ‘adult’ as long as I could.
- b.t.
I guess I'm middle-aged now (although I'm 48, so unless I live to be 96, I may be past middle age), but I still wonder if I'm a "grown-up" sometimes. I don't remember any big transition moment ... maybe when I started listening to my own music (which was all rock & roll stuff) instead of whatever my parents liked.
Colin- seems your parents were fairly open-minded, at least in regards to the tv viewing! Your 9:00 bedtime was pretty standard, many of us had similar bedtimes.
And then you got your own tv; that is indeed a milestone. Got mine for my 12th. birthday. Like yours, a small black and white portable. But didn't that seem like the most incredible, important acquisition at the time? It meant that if you wanted to stay up late and see the monster films until the test pattern appeared, you could....
b.t.- a good observation about the changing of the decades. It seemed odd at first to write '70' on your schoolwork paper, but otherwise the Big Changes were much more gradual; as you noted. Did you find, at the turn of the decade from 70's to 80's, that your more advanced age made the change more impactful? I recall looking with great anticipation to the 80's; perhaps due to the then-blossoming New Wave movement musically...
Mike W- ah, you youngsters; lol! Perhaps we mature, and get older, and accept the mantles of responsibility that adulthood requires. But if we're lucky, we never totally 'grow up'; keeping alive a bit of the kid within us.
Nice, insightful topic, Red-- thumbs-up--
I pass the 60 checkpoint myself in about 3 months-- and like many of us, from the inside it doesn't register the same way as it might look from the outside. To wit: I volunteer at a Parrot Rescue Sanctuary right now, and there's a nice older retired fellow on my Monday team named Bill. Enjoyable, relatable, energetic for his age-- and I fall into that whole "hope I'm doing as well as Bill when I'm his age!" mindset. Which will never happen. Because it eventually came up that he was a year BEHIND me in high school, and that I am more than a year older than this guys that I was reading as "old". . . Ohhhhhhhh boy. . . !
Some VERY similar youthful experiences to a lot of you guys: Bedtime was a firm 9:00 for years and years. One memorable transition point, though, was when ALL IN THE FAMILY premiered, and at some point in that first season, my folks asked me to stay up and watch it and see if I liked it. Which to this day I cannot fathom, 'cause that was a wildly out-of-character move for either of them. Heck, minus the astonishing poly-bigotry, my Dad's demeanor was just about as Archie Bunker-like as a person's could be-- he clearly admired that pugnacious, my-opinion-is-all-I-need-for-facts tough-guy nonsense. Ugh.
I got a paper route in. . . '72, maybe? And the first thing I did with my first month's earnings was. . . buy a portable B&W portable Zenith television! And man I LOVED that box! It was indeed the pinnacle of entertainment independence-- and I don't think we had a color TV yet, regardless, so that aspect was no hardship. And YES-- that was the gateway to staying up and watching Double Creature Feature-- sometimes going to sleep at 3:30! (And then getting up at 5:30 on Sunday mornings to do the morning paper route-- which ended up being my Dad hauling me around on the back of the station wagon--- ha!)(I dozed off more than once and fell off the tailgate---).
And a bit later on, when we had the Tuesday Night and Wednesday Night Movie of the Week (those GEMS from that era--- made for TV), there was another transition where I had to petition for a later bedtime-- 10:30, was it?-- because it was always a half-hour before the MotW was finished, and I was NEVER getting to see the end of anything. It was decades before I got to see how DUEL ended w/ my own eyes. . .
There are, of course, more deeply personal, transitions of substance that happened during those tween/early teen years-- we had a family that was disintegrating over an extended time in a very ugly way, and that brought it's own kind moments-of-growth, there's just no getting around that. But--- that is part of the whole life-package, of course.
HB
Red:
It’s funny, but until you asked, I’d never really thought about the switchover from 1979 to 1980, and my reaction to it. Probably because of some ugly soap opera stuff going on in my own life at the time (mostly having to do with a drawn-out and painful break-up with my high school sweetie), the 1970s turned into the 1980s without me paying much attention. Certainly not with the same intensity that 8-year-old Me had marked the transition a decade earlier.
In fact, except for that first transition, and the one from 1999 to 2000, when everyone half-expected that our computers were all going to go haywire at the stroke of Midnight, I’ve rarely given much thought to the decades switching over. And as for the ‘Aughts’ transitioning to the Teens and the Teens transitioning to the 20s, it’s all kinda becoming one big blur. Odd...
- b.t.
I regarded the changeover from 1979 to 1980 as an extremely significant event and it was the first change of decade that I was aware of, being only 3 in 1969 and therefore completely uninterested in the new decade of the '70s. I saved the 1979 Christmas/New Year TV guides for many years afterwards (in those days you had to buy two TV guides every week, one for the BBC and one for their rival ITV. In 1991 it finally became legal for all TV listings to be printed in just one magazine).
I can vividly recall my sister and I watching my new portable TV on December 31st 1979 - the very last show of the decade was called "The Seventies Stop Here" which looked back at the BBC's programming throughout the decade now ending. And at about 30 seconds before midnight my father came into my bedroom with some drinks on a tray (probably Babycham which has the same alcoholic content as beer but my father rarely drank alcohol and he seemed to think that Babycham was okay for children because it had "Baby" in the name and a cute little chamois on the label).
bt mentioned the word "Aughts" which I've read before on other BITBA comments - in the UK the decade from 2000-2009 is unofficially called "The Noughties" (but 2010-2019 isn't called "The Tennies" even though logically it should be).
Colin, real quick--
Is Noughties prounced "NOWT-ies" or "NAWT-ies"--?
--U.S. Pop-cultural Note--: From about the mid-20th century onward, having an old-timer regale folks with a story or reminiscence about, like, "The Flood in aught-three" or "The blizzard of aught-five" was a charming (albeit inescapable) cliche'---
(I confess to using it myself when the opportunity presents itself. . . )
HB
HB, Noughties is pronounced NAWT-ies.
Welp-- THAT'S certainly an awkward homonym--!
HB
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