Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!pasteur!trinity!max
From: max@trinity.uucp (Max Hauser)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Old F's (was: Auto Homemation)
Keywords: dip, neckties, Mercedes-Benz
Message-ID: <515@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu>
Date: 3 Feb 88 00:36:46 GMT
References: <786@PT.CS.CMU.EDU>
Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu
Reply-To: max@trinity.UUCP (Max Hauser)
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Organization: UC Berkeley
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In article <786@PT.CS.CMU.EDU> phd@SPEECH1.CS.CMU.EDU (Paul Dietz) asks:

>P.S. Just how old does one have to be to be "an old fart"?
>How will I know when it happens to me?

I can't answer definitively, but the following are symptomatic:

1. Passing out dip recipes at tailgate parties for college football

2. Buying neckties or license-plate holders that announce where
   you went to school (Recently while driving in Moraga, California,
   I found myself behind a stodgy, cream-colored Mercedes-Benz whose
   license-plate rim grandly proclaimed "UCLA Alumni." Paul Fussell
   would have a field day with that.)

3. Grousing about how such-and-such was (better, more impressive,
   more competent, etc.) back when YOU were in school

4. Hearing teenagers say "wow!" when you reminisce about something
   in the seemingly recent past, and realizing that it's their
   reaction of wonder to events of prehistoric remoteness

5. Remembering when transistors were novel 

6. Remembering the names of the Cleaver family 
						M. Hauser (Go Bears!)