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If you were around in the 50's or 60's, what did you think your life would be like in 2022?


MickinMD

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Born in 1950, I thought I'd be physically limited a lot more than in reality and that 2022 would be pretty close to the end.

If you told me then I'd be walking a dog a hilly three miles for fun in 2022, I'd think I was going to become one of the healthiest people on earth.

If you told me I'd be struggling to lose weight, skinny me would think you were crazy - my father used to call me "Tapeworm" because I could eat and eat and not gain weight.

Of course, in the 50's and 60's the old people then had been born in the 1800's and, either because of mindset or the toll years took on them, they weren't very active.  If you saw someone 70 years-old on a bicycle, that would be a shock!

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11 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

Born in 1950, I thought I'd be physically limited a lot more than in reality and that 2022 would be pretty close to the end.

Say you started paying attention when you were 10, you would have been expecting to be GONE by 2022.  2016 would have been an average guess :)

In 1960, men could expect to live to age 66.6, on average, while women lived to age 73.1. Between 1960 and 2015, male life expectancy increased to 77.0 years—a gain of about 10 years. Female life expectancy grew to 81.7 years— an increase of almost 9 years.

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I did not expect to still be here.  I also did not expect to see the great democracy experiment of the Republic to be this close to it's end.  I was born less than 10 months after the end of WWII during a period of euphoria and a sense of belonging to something great.  Who knew it would eat itself from the inside.

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17 minutes ago, MickinMD said:

Of course, in the 50's and 60's the old people then had been born in the 1800's and, either because of mindset or the toll years took on them, they weren't very active.  If you saw someone 70 years-old on a bicycle, that would be a shock!

You must not have been around any farmers. They may have slowed down in their 70s but they were still actively farming. My granddad was cutting up firewood on a buzzsaw in his seventies and cut off two fingers by accident. My uncle drove him to the hospital and they bandaged him up and the next time I saw him he was driving the tractor. Look at grandpa Walton, he stayed active until the day he died.

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4 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

I did not expect to still be here.  I also did not expect to see the great democracy experiment of the Republic to be this close to it's end.  I was born less than 10 months after the end of WWII during a period of euphoria and a sense of belonging to something great.  Who knew it would eat itself from the inside.

I keep thinking aboot ancient civilizations that managed to go on for many centuries.  Ours seems to be built on a house of cards. But taking a broader view, Europe has carried on for quite a while. Would be interesting to compare and contrast the two. 

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1 minute ago, Philander Seabury said:

I keep thinking aboot ancient civilizations that managed to go on for many centuries.  Ours seems to be built on a house of cards. But taking a broader view, Europe has carried on for quite a while. Would be interesting to compare and contrast the two. 

This country was set up as a Republic.  We are trending toward a direct democracy which IMO will end us.  It gives too many the opportunity to disrupt everything.

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I never expected to live past thirty. The Cold War and air raid drills in school and then Vietnam. My long range goal was to get married, try to make it to thirty. Anything after that was a bonus. I never dreamed I’d live long enough to have 15 grandkids (great grandkid in the oven).

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Born in 1964.  I remember space travel as being a big thing and the possibility of nuclear war with Russia.   I am very myopic and resist change.  I just assumed you graduated high school, went to college, got a job doing "business stuff" and got the house, white picket fence, two kids and a dog.

Realized later in life that was not true and we all have to make our own way in this world and that change can be painful.  I sort of assumed we would just go on the same way forever.   Did not see the rapid way technology would change our work and play environment coming.  I did sort of expect flying cars and the like, but never gasoline being phased out by electric.

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I didn’t have visions of what the world would be like as a child.  I remember when in the army, guys would ask where they thought they’d be at 30 and I always saw myself as a cop & living the bachelor life.  At 30 I had already left the PD and was married with a kid.  

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5 minutes ago, Rattlecan said:

You were reading Popular Mechanics back then to, eh?

Yes. My psychologist told me to. When I was around 11 years old I was driving my parents and teachers crazy. I had (have?) what is now called Attention Deficit Disorder. They sent me to a shrink who said I was bored and needed to be more mentally active. They didn't have the drugs back then so he suggested that I read magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. I even subscribed to Car & Driver for over 45 years before I realized that I'd probably never own the cars they tested.

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4 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Funny, eh?  R&T as well.

R&T as well plus Hot Rod and a few others. Not Motor Trend though. I still subscribe to a dozen magazines.

In high school I convinced the librarian, an old nun too addled to teach, to subscribe to C&D, R&T, Hot Rod, and a few others. I figured that Playboy might be just a step too far.

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2 hours ago, Longjohn said:

You must not have been around any farmers. They may have slowed down in their 70s but they were still actively farming. My granddad was cutting up firewood on a buzzsaw in his seventies and cut off two fingers by accident. My uncle drove him to the hospital and they bandaged him up and the next time I saw him he was driving the tractor. Look at grandpa Walton, he stayed active until the day he died.

True.  I've heard of 100 year-old farmers plowing fields behind plow horses.

My undergrad chemistry major advisor was from Chicago and did his post-graduate work at the University of Kansas.

He said the average woman on campus was the prettiest he'd ever seen: so many of them were healthy, farm-girls!

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2 hours ago, JerrySTL said:

I didn't think that I'd live this long. I figured that I'd crash in my flying car long before now.

Did you know they had a lot of flying cars in the late 1940's and when the Interstate Highway System was being planned, a runway every 50-60 miles was initially going to be included?

Eventually, someone asked, "And all those unregulated cars no lane guides, with engine failures, etc. are going to be a good thing?"

So the flying cars went away!

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