Being 43

As a teacher of 11-12 year olds I always try to be mindful of the year they were born and what was happening in the world at that time.  This year’s group was born in 2001 or 2002.  They don’t remember a time before Columbine and 9-11.  Their first president was George Bush.  People have always had cell phones….etc……  So I was thinking about my own time frame.  Now this might be a boring read to those not my age, but if you’re somewhere around 40 years old, I hope you can appreciate it. [Disclaimer:  I am American, so this is from an American-centric point of view.  It is also based on my experience and contains my opinions.  Still, I hope it speaks to you somehow.]

To be 43:

To be 43 is to be born in 1970.

·         Nixon was president, there was a war in Vietnam, but you don’t remember either

·         Men had landed on the moon the summer before you were born

·         Two years before that...the dream ended and Martin Luther King was killed

·         In pop culture, the Beatles were  no longer a group

·         There was Laugh-In, from time to time now people recall it and you smile, but you never saw it live. 

·         You never saw the Brady Bunch or Bewitched live either, but you liked the reruns.

·         Because to be 43 means you grew up with a black and white TV and 4 channels. No DVR, no VCR, just reruns. 

·         You watched it live or not at all.  Cartoons, better tune in on Saturday morning.

·         When you’re 43, you are familiar with the “land shark” of SNL, and more likely to remember “Hans and Franz’s :  “We’ll pump you up,”  and the church lady than John Belushi.

·         Because Belushi died just as you were entering your teen years.  And Lennon died then too.  You remember, this was a time you started to pay attention.

·         At 43, you remember political things like the Iranian Hostage Crisis, you do not remember the Bay of Pigs, that stuff is history just as your first hand experience is history to someone younger.

·         No one had a cell phone, but there were “car phones” that you never saw except in a movie.  Some people had VCR’s.  And video games…

·         You had Pong in the 70’s and the Atari 2600 when you were 12. 

·         And you remember when MTV was born!

·         And they played music videos and the exposure to pop culture exploded:

·         43 means you might have worn leg warmers, boingers, Madonna inspired jewelry, florescent clothing, roach clips with feathers dangling off them and of course, the off the shoulder Flash Dance look.

·         At 43 there may have been a time when you wished you were:  Laura Ingalls, Wonder Woman, Daisy Duke, Baby, or Molly Ringwald…or maybe you wanted to be as cool as them, or as trendy.

·         And you remember where you were, not when Kennedy was shot, but when the Challenger exploded.  In 1986.  I heard about it while walking in the hallway by the chemistry room. 

·         It’s likely you never believed there’d be a nuclear war.  But felt some worry when 3 Mile Island had a leak and later with Chernobyl.

·         It was your generation:  “Generation X” that saw The Berlin Wall fall, Glasnost, the end of the Soviet Bloc, the massive change to Europe.

·         You went from “Free Nelson Mandela” to seeing the man become the president of a nation you never thought would escape apartheid.

·         Clinton became president and it seemed that anything was possible.

·         You survived Y2K and learned to say Twenty-Ten, (well no, you planned on saying it that way since you were a little kid).

·         And that debate you used to have, who will the US elect first:  a woman or a black man?  That got answered.  When you stopped everything in the middle of the morning to watch the Inauguration, you may have cried a little with joy….or maybe not.

·         Sadly, when you are 43 you remember a time when people were more free.  There was the ERA and women felt the time had come to go out and take what was theirs.  They used birth control and planned families and had careers and some never even changed their names.  You remember when society wasn’t quick to go to court and sue, when people took personal responsibility…and with that came a freedom.  The freedom to make mistakes and be forgiven.  Children could play and even work some and learn from their mistakes and slowly gain responsibility, all while no one would be sued if someone got hurt.

And there is so much more, but I thought I’d stop the list around the turn of the century.  So much has happened since my newest group of students were born.  So many new memories for them to build, but that will be their story and their list to make, someday, when they are 43.

Some notable events of your coming of age years in the 70’s and 80’s (and you thought these things were always around)!!!

1970

Aswan High Dam Completed

Beatles Break Up

Computer Floppy Disks Introduced

1971

VCRs Introduced

1972

Pocket Calculators Introduced  

Terrorists Attack at the Olympic Games in Munich

Watergate Scandal Begins

1973

Roe vs Wade Legalizes Abortion in the U.S.

Sears Tower Built

U.S. Pulls Out of Vietnam

1974

Halie Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, Deposed

Mikhail Baryshnikov Defects

Patty Hearst Kidnapped

Terracotta Army Discovered in China

U.S. President Nixon Resigns

1975

Microsoft Founded

1977

Elvis Found Dead

Star Wars Movie Released

1978

First Test-Tube Baby Born

John Paul II Becomes Pope

Jonestown Massacre (and you know what “drinking the Koolaid means)

1979

Ayatollah Khomeini Returns as Leader of Iran

Iran Takes American Hostages in Tehran

Margaret Thatcher First Woman Prime Minister of Great Britain

Mother Teresa Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

Nuclear Accident at Three Mile Island

Sony Introduces the Walkman

1980

John Lennon Assassinated

Mount St. Helens Erupts

Pac-Man Video Game Released

Rubik's Cube Becomes Popular

1981

Millions Watch Royal Wedding on T.V.

New Plague Identified as AIDS

Personal Computers (PC) Introduced by IBM

1983

Sally Ride Becomes the First American Woman in Space

1984

PG-13 Movie Rating Created

1985

Mikhail Gorbachev Calls for Glasnost and Perestroika

Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes

Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

Live Aid

1988

You graduate High School

1989

Berlin Wall Falls

Exxon Valdez Spills Millions of Gallons of Oil on Coastline

Students Massacred in China's Tiananmen Square

My current students will not have been born in the same century as me!  And that’s why, sometimes at 43, you feel a little old!