U is for Up your nose with a rubber hose.

or Part Two of Twenty Words and Phrases that Show Your Age

Yesterday, I mentioned a link from Dictionary.com that listed 20 words or phrases that are considered dated. I discussed my opinions on ten from the list yesterday and today I will give my opinions on the other 10.

1. Up your nose with a rubber hose: This phrase comes from the sitcom, Welcome Back Kotter, a popular TV show in the 1970s. One of the characters would use this phrase as an insult. I never liked the saying the first time and I am glad that it's outdated now.

2. Pigpen, you got your ears on?: This is something you would say on a CB radio. CB radios were really trendy in the late 1970s and used for communication between truckers mostly. These too have been replaced by several iterations of technology and I'm not sure how many people today would understand that phrase if they heard it.

3. Walkman: A Walkman was a portable tape player that came out in 1979 and became very popular. But technology has evolved light years away from it. Yep, this is an word that shows your age.

4. Fotomat: A Fotomat was a place where you dropped off your film to be developed. This is definitely an old word because people using film to take a picture are few and far between these days.

5. Goodnight, John-Boy: This was the last line in most episodes of the heartwarming TV series, The Waltons. The show aired for a decade starting in 1971. I'm not sure how many people today have seen the Waltons so I've got to believe this is a dated phrase.

6. The thrill of victory (and the agony of defeat): This was one of the opening lines to the TV show, The Wide World of Sports that ran from 1961-1998. The list authors said that we have 24/7 sports watching available now and the the phrase is no longer relevant. I think it was a great phrase and should still be around.

7. Just one more thing: I didn't even know that this was a special phrase. Apparently on the TV show, Colombo, Detective Colombo used it a lot. So did Steve Jobs later. I have no opinion on this one except sometimes it is a useful thing to say.

8. Mood ring: Mood rings were popular in the 1970s. It was a ring that changed colors depending on your body temperature. Body temperature was supposedly an indication of emotions or moods and different temperatures produced different colors. Thus, you could supposedly tell someone's mood by looking at the color of the ring. This is an old fad, but I think it is a fun thing to remember.

9. Pet Rock™: Pet rocks were also a fad in the mid 1970's when people bought rocks to be their pets. The marketing genius, Gary Dahl, behind the fad became a millionaire from it. The fad only lasted 6 months, but it does come up then and again in discussions about how people will buy anything. Today, it is a trend to paint rocks with positive messages on them and leave them random places for people to find. Occasionally, I hear these kindness rocks compared to pet rocks.

10. Rolodex: a Roladex is a turning paper address file that very few people use any more. Most contact information is located on a person's computer or smart device these days. I will grant you that Rolodex is an old term.

Once again I had my Millennial son look at the list and tell me what he thought about the words. He said the The thrill of victory (and the agony of defeat) was the only one he heard used regularly. I found that interesting and not what I would have predicted.

So what do these words and phrases say to you?

T is for Twenty words that show your age

or T is for Ten Words Today and Ten More Tomorrow

While on Dictionary.com this link caught my eye, Words (and Phrases) That Will Show Your Age. Of course, I clicked on it to see what they considered old. Some I agreed with and some I didn't. Half of the list is below with my comments. I'll share the other half tomorrow.  See what you think.*

1. Making whoopee: This comes from a 1920s Eddie Cantor song and means having sex. Although I've heard this phrase a lot, it seems old even to me. 

2. Wet-blanket: This means put a damper on things and comes from putting out a fire with a wet blanket. It's been used since the 1800's and still seems relevant to me today.

3. Little black book: And while I understand that most people, especially the younger ones, don't carry an address book or the little black book version of one that list potential dates, this is a phrase that I still hear used and most people understand it.

4. VCR and videotape: This is definitely old technology, but it is still around. Who knows?  The Millennials may understand it someday when VHS tapes come back like vinyl records have. (Note to self. Need to get the VHS family movies transferred onto DVD's or whatever the latest technology is.)

5. Long-distance call: This is probably a phrase that does show you are older if you use it. Extra charges for calling out of your area code are a thing of the past. Texting, Skyping, Face Timing, etc. are probably used more than phone calls in the younger group.

6. Davenport and Chesterfield: These are both names for sofas derived from Davenport who commissioned the first leather sofa and Chesterfield a furniture maker. They were popular in the early and mid 1900's. I have never heard of a sofa called a Chesterfield, but I have heard of a Davenport and always wondered where that name came from. I agree with the article. These are probably old terms and becoming obsolete.

7. How’s tricks?:This phrase was used in the 1950's and 1960's by men asking women how they were. The phrase probably had origins from men who were managing women turning tricks. I still hear the phrase occasionally and didn't realize that it was a one way question. If this phrase is not becoming obsolete, I think it should be because of its origin.

8. “Dear John” letter: This phrase became popular in World War II when a girl would write to a serviceman and tell them their romance was over. The article suggest that John is an old fashioned name and maybe it should be updated with something like "Dear Lucas". I think that's just silly. Most people know the phrase and what it means and it is still used. However, they also suggest it could be replaced with an emoji. I don't like that idea but I will concede that emojis are taking the place of a lot of words and phrases these days.

9. Web surfing: They say this term was more prevalent when the internet was newer and we don't need a term for this any more. Slightly different meaning, but I would say that Googling would be a better substitute.

10. Fuddy-duddy: This one means stuffy and old fashioned. Maybe this is a bit out of date, but is it really that much worse than using Old Fart as they suggested as a more modern phase? Not in my mind.

You've heard my perspective on this list but I am a Baby Boomer, i.e. an older person. For a different perspective, I asked my Millennial son, Theo, what he thought of these words. He read them over and said the only one that he hears used regularly is Wet blanket. I don't know if he's representative of his age group, but I did find that interesting.

Tune in tomorrow for the other ten words and phrases that are considered old fashioned.

*Blogger and I aren't getting along again. I couldn't get rid of the white background in the time I had.

S is for Saturday Morning

S is for:

Saturday Morning

the red and grey Sunrise out the window

Sleepy eyes trying to wake up

the Smell of coffee wafting from the kitchen

the Sound of meowing cats who want to be fed

the Start of another day.

R is for Red

or Red is not for Redheads.

What's your favorite color? Do you have a color you don't like at all? Do have certain colors that you think you look better in? For the first half of my life, I had one color that I didn't like and thought I didn't look good in, Red.

I was one of those little girls who had the long, dark red curls that everyone said were beautiful. However, after every comment that someone made about how much they loved my curls, it was followed with a comment about how redheads couldn't wear red. I heard it so much that I grew up to dislike red in all situations, not just in clothes. As time went on, I also heard that redheads shouldn't wear pink either. Pink was just behind red in my dislikes.

Advance to several years when my oldest sister went to a Color Me Beautiful party. This was a home party where they determined what season you were according to your hair and skin tone and what colors looked best on you. My sister learned that she was an Autumn at this party and looked good in earth tones or Autumn colors. The rest of us, sisters, had similar coloration to her and followed her lead in what colors we should be wearing. Years later, I even got a Color Me Beautiful book as a reference for my colors. One of the first things I learned from this was there are two basic colors of red, a blue based one and an orange based one. The orange based one was okay for Autumns to wear. Wow! Red was okay to wear.

However, now not only did I know a whole set of colors that supposedly looked good on me, I had whole set of ones that supposedly didn't look good on me, not just red and pink. I'm not sure this was progress. As time went on, I did gravitate to the colors that were recommended for Autumns. And they probably did look better with my skin tone.

But I don't really care any more. If I like the color whether or not it is supposed to look good on me, I wear it. If it makes me happy, it will show on my face and that will make me look better than anything else. And these days, I like red. I wear it, I decorate with it, and I paint with it. I am happy for this progress and sad for all those years, I missed out on the fun things that were red.

Q is for Qute

or Q is for Cute

I have a thing about "qute" spellings of words. I don't like them. I didn't used to mind, but that all changed after one year in New Orleans doing a service project with our church.

Ward and I were young professionals spending a lot of time at our jobs. We had big projects with deadlines that could only be met by spending many hours at the office. To add something else to our life besides work, we spent every Wednesday afternoon tutoring young kids at a local church. The kids were in kindergarten through second grade from disadvantaged families. A van would pick them up after school and bring them to the church for snacks and tutoring from volunteers, including Ward and me. The idea was early intervention with learning would help prevent problems further down the road.

What a surprise these kids were for us. Reading was a big part of both of our households growing up, but not for these kids. They had no reading material in their homes. Not a newspaper, not a book, not even a TV guide. None of these kids could read and not all of them even knew the alphabet. TV was the main form of entertainment and where they got their examples. "What's a word that starts with J?"
"Jack from Three's Company"

Their home life was difficult with all of them living in housing projects. I remember one day when Eric, whom we worked with, was excited because he was going to get to visit his uncle in jail. His father was no where in sight and his uncle was a special person to him.

As I saw how these kids struggled, I started to look at things differently. I noticed when words were spelled with cute spellings for advertising. All I could think about when I saw them was how hard reading was for these kids and they didn't need help with nonstandard spellings.

And I started to be less judgmental about what people were reading. I didn't realize it, but I was judging people by their choice in reading material. I didn't think as highly of someone reading a romance novel as someone reading a classic. But after working with these kids, I was very happy to see someone reading. Anything. It didn't matter what the content was. Ward and I rode the bus to work through some of these housing projects where these kids lived. Not many people were reading on the bus, but my heart sang when I saw someone reading, no matter what it was.

I'd like to say that Eric eventually went to college because of our early work with him, but I don't know where he ended up. And the saddest part of the whole experience was I felt like were already too late. We went every week, but I didn't feel like we were making a difference with these kids. They needed more help than we could them, but I hope I am wrong. I hope we planted a little seed somewhere that helped them live a better life.