Were you born in the wrong decade?

[capt.ron]

My mother once said that when I was waxing nostalgic about US 66 and times past. So with that being said, I may have been better off being born back in the 40's. As I approach my later teens, I acquire an Edsel and begin to cruise US 66, staying primarily out of the LA area and running from the SoCal high desert to Amarillo, TX. I would be a Beatnik, waxing poetic about the endless ribbon of road cutting straight through the land as far as the eye can see (stretch of 66 in New Mexico between Cline's Corners and Santa Rosa).

[bandit957]

In some ways, I wish I was born later, so my parents could post hilarious YouTube videos documenting my young life. On the other hand, most of the later decades were more fascist than the era when I was raised.

[bing101]

I wish I was born in 1980 and not 1986. Well one reason was most of my friends were like 3-4 years older than me though.

[jakeroot]

I've more than once considered what it would have been like to have been born in 60s England. I'm a huge fan of 80s British music (chiefly New Wave, which was more popular in the UK). A lot of the UK motorway network was built in the 70s and 80s too, so it would have been cool to watch them pop up.

To make it clear, I've only wondered. I'm rather happy having been born in '95. There's many things that I do from day to day that I take for granted, to say the least.

[Takumi]

Short answer, yes.

[The Nature Boy]

My musical and television tastes are firmly rooted in the 70s and 80s so I would've probably done well to be born in the late 50s - early 60s.

[triplemultiplex]

Nope.  Right on schedule.

If you were born earlier or later, that is probably going to dramatically affect what stuff you're into.  The same things will hit your brain at a different times and shit you fell in love with at age 13 may be dismissed by you at age 20 or at age 10.

[formulanone]

Nope.  Right on schedule.

If you were born earlier or later, that is probably going to dramatically affect what stuff you're into.  The same things will hit your brain at a different times and shit you fell in love with at age 13 may be dismissed by you at age 20 or at age 10.

^ Pretty much this.

[jakeroot]

If you were born earlier or later, that is probably going to dramatically affect what stuff you're into.

Well, duh. But that's not the point of the thread.

[formulanone]

If you were born earlier or later, that is probably going to dramatically affect what stuff you're into.

Well, duh. But that's not the point of the thread.

So what is the point of the thread, since time travel hasn't been invented yet? If you feel out of place in this decade, you're certain to be "out in left field" in another.

Having the benefit of knowing what happened 10-20-30 years in the future might not necessarily make you famous or interesting, but...more likely, a dangerous kook.

[jakeroot]

If you were born earlier or later, that is probably going to dramatically affect what stuff you're into.

Well, duh. But that's not the point of the thread.

So what is the point of the thread, since time travel hasn't been invented yet? If you feel out of place in this decade, you're certain to be "out in left field" in another.

Having the benefit of knowing what happened 10-20-30 years in the future might not necessarily make you famous or interesting, but...more likely, a dangerous kook.

The point is to discuss whether or not we find previous generations more interesting than the current one. "Born in the wrong decade" is not meant to be taken literally.

[21stCenturyRoad]

It would be cool to be a kid in the 70s-80s, I really enjoy the music from those times. That and to see how differently people lived, to gain a perspective.

[nexus73]

Not at all!  Being born the year Rock and Roll began, now how does it get any cooler than that?  Being able to see so much happen in so many areas of endeavor was great. 

If I could pick another time to be born on this planet, it would be when humanity heads for the stars.

Rick

[Max Rockatansky]

I was born in the early 1980s and definitely influenced the most by said decade.  A lot of people that don't know me very well seem to think I'm a 1990s person for whatever reason.  Really I'm not a big internet/social media/people oriented type of person like most 1990s people but rather introverted which was much more a trope of the 1980s.  Really I still pretty much like everything I grew up with in the 80s like cars, music, movies, TV shows, etc.   

[sparker]

I'm pretty much satisfied with my circumstances, being an early "baby boomer" (very late '40's).  While occasionally prone to hindsight (especially about being an arrogant asshole in my early 20's and thus screwing up my first marriage!), at 68 I am, surprisingly, looking toward the future with several business and personal projects in progress -- and all is going reasonably well (that itself being unusual in my experience); glitches and "speedbumps" are minor in comparison with the overall picture.  Put it this way -- I made most of my major mistakes in the first 60% of my life -- and acquiring the ability to weather life's storms, bounce back from the precipice, and acquire a modicum of  experience/information during the process has been my best asset -- particularly in the ability to discern reality from perception.  I don't think being born any other time would have allowed me to develop that skill set.  I'm fine being just where I am!

[Brian556]

The system is really unfair to young people currently. A lot of them have to live with their parents well into their 20's because wages are so low and housing is so expensive. And most parents these days are asses to their adult children, and try to continue to treat them as if they were still little kids, and all the young adults are trapped and forced to put up with their assholery.

Question for you older guys: Is it true that minimum wage in 1972 was the equivalent of $22/hr in today's money?

[Henry]

My mother once said that when I was waxing nostalgic about US 66 and times past. So with that being said, I may have been better off being born back in the 40's. As I approach my later teens, I acquire an Edsel and begin to cruise US 66, staying primarily out of the LA area and running from the SoCal high desert to Amarillo, TX. I would be a Beatnik, waxing poetic about the endless ribbon of road cutting straight through the land as far as the eye can see (stretch of 66 in New Mexico between Cline's Corners and Santa Rosa).

I feel for you. I wish that I had been born in the same year that my father was (1946) so at least I could get the chance to ride on Route 66 as a continuous route that has no freeway alongside it. And I would probably drive it in a Corvette convertible, which is the same car that they drove in the road's namesake TV show. (Slightly off-topic: I guess this is what Chevy had in mind when they told us to "Find new roads"!)

[ColossalBlocks]

Meh. I'd much rather be born in a range of the early 70s to the late 80s. According to my father, I'm lucky that I even got a decent job without a college education.

[bandit957]

Question for you older guys: Is it true that minimum wage in 1972 was the equivalent of $22/hr in today's money?

Yes.

And labor unions were much stronger then.

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

I very much hate the decade I was born into (born in '99). I wish things were different, but every time I here people say "things were different back then!" How different? I know this generation is narcissistic and I personally don't have to luxary of having a phone upto par with others, but I am realizing that for sometime, everything revolved around me, my dad now doesn't pay for some of the things I would perfer to have. But, I am working to find employment.

[SectorZ]

Question for you older guys: Is it true that minimum wage in 1972 was the equivalent of $22/hr in today's money?

Yes.

And labor unions were much stronger then.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/21/adjusted-for-inflation-the-federal-minimum-wage-is-worth-less-than-50-years-ago.html

Umm, nope, about half that.

[adventurernumber1]

Were you born in the wrong decade?

I can't really say. I think that no matter what time I could ever be born in, I would still be a roadgeek. That is how strongly the interest is embedded in my soul. I could probably manage if I was born in most of any of the time periods in very recent history. There would be pros and cons of each and every one. If I was born in the mid-1910's like, say, my great-grandmother, I would grow up to see the exciting development of the US Highway system, but my early life would also be plagued by the Great Depression and both World Wars. Also, I would be, at least at first, living in a time when healthcare and mental health treatment would be very sub-par, compared to now. If I was born not long before or right around 1940, like most of my grandparents, the very beginning of my life would be a rough spot due to WWII, but being so young, I thankfully wouldn't have much memory of it. I would progress into my teenage years during the exciting time of rock-and-roll, and the very exciting creation of the Interstate Highway system. The 1960's would be a life-changing decade. There'd be the chance I would be forced to serve in the Vietnam War, or if not I would witness major, centuries-due social and civil rights changes in the home front. There would also be a huge boom in innovation in the music scene with acts such as The Beatles. Depending on what hemisphere of the world I would be in (fighting for my country and my life, or fighting for social reforms in my home country), life in the 1960's for me could either be really bad or really good. If I was born in the 1960's like my parents, life growing up would be quite nice. Many, many interstates would have been built and popping up by the time I was really growing up in the 1970's, and many wars and social changes will have already been fought (for the most part). I have many personal cultural roots in the 1970's. Also, the 1970's hairstyle (long hair, muttonchops/sideburns, mustache, etc.) has got to be my all-time favorite in world history. My hair mildly resembles that. If I reached adulthood in the 1980's (like my parents), that would also have been an exciting time to complete growing up, as would the 1990's, with both of those decades marking the amazing rise of video games as we know them today. My cousin was born in the early 1990's, and because of him, I have been able to experience the joys of playing video games on an N64 as if that is what I had grown up on myself.

In the end, I was born in late 1999. I don't think I'd change it, even though I think I could enjoy the positives of other decades if I was born in them. Today's world has many pros and many cons, but we can all agree that quality of life for all people on earth, even in the developing countries, is miles better than it was a few centuries ago. For us roadgeeks, this is a special age. We are able to all come together, by way of this forum, our wonderful websites that some of you have made, road videos, road pictures, etc., all falling under the umbrella of technological internet communication of the modern day. We live, now, in an age, where us roadgeeks can use our provided technology to do amazing things and express our interests in ways such as making unbelieveably realistic signs using software, making driving simulators on video games, and sharing our road photos and videos on the internet for all to see!!! And due to this forum and such, we can meet up with eachother in real life by way of roadmeets and such. So basically, I personally wouldn't change what decade I was born. Today's era in 2017 has very good quality of life, ever-improving healthcare (both mental and physical), technological advancements and incredibly fun things such as video games, and the world is a much "smaller" place - we, on the globe, are very interconnected these days, and we can easily reach other people in real life, and especially online. From a roadgeek perspective, each of these time periods has their own sweet spot. In the early 20th Century, you'd see the US Highway system come to life, and especially see it before many of the US Highways got tragically decommissioned later on. In the mid-to-late 20th Century, you'd see the Interstate Highway system come to life. Also, if you've lived for a long time before today, you've had the privilege to get to see so many truss (and other kinds of) bridges before so many of them are taken down and simply replaced by regular bridges, and in many of those situations, the deed has already been long done, before mine and many others' lifetimes even began. Today, we have, among other good road-related things, the livelihood of the roadgeek community (which it was hard for us to know the rest of us existed before the internet), and we are all interconnected now. 2017 has some really good things, and it sure has some bad things as well, but at least we got the rest of us to ride it out with, no matter what happens. 

[roadman]

I was born in 1961.  Upon reflection, I''m satisfied that I was born in the right decade.  As a kid, TV programs were engaging but still relatively tame (no profanity), commercials were very minimal (2 minutes per half-hour), Saturday morning cartoons didn't start to get really "preachy" until I mostly outgrew them, and independent UHF stations still showed reruns of decent - by kid standards- programs (like Three Stooges, F Troop, and Addams Family among others) in the afternoons.  The majority of toys I had were still of good quality and had lasting play value as compared to most of the toys my nieces and nephews had in later years.

As I went from elementary school into junior high (please don't call it "middle school") and high school, I entered in the era of early to mid 1970s folk and rock (IMO some of the best music ever recorded), much of which I still have in my collection today.  In my late high school and college years, I developed an appreciation for quality stereo equipment - much of which was readily available on the used market and, with rare exceptions (and unlike today), was easily repairable by those of us with average mechanical/electrical skills.

When learning to drive, and for several years thereafter, the cars I relied on (my parents' cars) were a 1975 Buick Century wagon and a 1977 Chevy Impala sedan.  Although the cars I've driven since have been much smaller, and more responsive, I maintain to this day that these types of cars are still the best cars for a novice driver to learn on and to use for the first two or three years.  The principle is simple - if you can handle big American road behemoths, you should have no problem with nearly any other car out there.

Now for some road-related comments:

Often took family trips from Massachusetts to Annapolis and, in later years, Williamsburg, between the late 1960s and the mid-1970s - this during the era of much highway construction and expansion along the East Coast such as the expansion of the New Jersey Turnpike, the opening of the second span of the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and the complete reconstruction of the Wilbur Cross Highway among many memories I have.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I also recall seeing the local news coverage of the Boston area highway expansion plans, protests, and ultimate cancellation (my parents always encouraged us, even as children, to watch the news - something I doubt many people do today).  While I was too young to fully understand and appreciate the politics behind the various decisions, it nevertheless gave me a good grounding in the history of Boston highway development - which has served me in good stead on many an occasion.

Looking back, it hasn't been a perfect ride (as I'm sure few people's life experiences have been), but overall I consider myself both fortunate and happy to have grown up in the era I did.

[hbelkins]

As I went from elementary school into junior high (please don't call it "middle school")

My understanding is that middle schools and junior highs encompass different grade divisions. I'm not sure what the breakdown is for each specific term, but in one of those categories, ninth graders (freshmen) go to that school and not the high school, which is for the top three grades. The other doesn't contain ninth graders, and all four years go to high school.

I went to something called an "upper elementary," which was some sort of newfangled term used in the early 70s for a school encompassing sixth through eighth grades.

[bandit957]

As I went from elementary school into junior high (please don't call it "middle school")

My understanding is that middle schools and junior highs encompass different grade divisions. I'm not sure what the breakdown is for each specific term, but in one of those categories, ninth graders (freshmen) go to that school and not the high school, which is for the top three grades. The other doesn't contain ninth graders, and all four years go to high school.

I went to something called an "upper elementary," which was some sort of newfangled term used in the early 70s for a school encompassing sixth through eighth grades.

I thought middle school and junior high school were the same thing: 6th to 8th grade. I went to Cline Middle School (a public school) in the mid-'80s, which included 6th to 8th. Then I went to a Catholic school that had 1st to 8th, but they kept insisting middle school only included 7th to 8th. (That's not surprising, since I learned some coursework in public school in 6th grade that the Catholic high school taught again when I was a sophomore, since the parochial schools are so far behind.) I don't remember whether this school called it middle school or junior high.