Bill's Bulletin Board
By Bill Rea

I received a nice little email last week from a former colleague; one of those little items that reminds you about the steady passage of time, regardless of how painful it might be.

Indeed, the opening line of the message (I was one of about a dozen people sent this item) specified it was for "those whose level of maturity qualifies them to relate to it."

In other words, old fogies like me!

Part of the message related that there a place called Beloit College in Wisconsin. Every year, the administration of this institution compiles a list for the faculty of events the expected freshmen might or might not remember. The aim, I guess, is to make the profs and other staff aware of the mindsets that might be possessed by the charges they are about to take charge of.

It is, perhaps, a useful tool for all of us, since I think all of us sometimes have trouble getting our heads around the basic fact that a younger group of people might not remember the same things we do. To people who would tell me, for example, that I don't know what it's like to have lived through a World War, I simply reply, "Of course I don't know; I wasn't around then!"

Some people relate their memories to whether they came before or after certain events. In the case of my maternal grandfather, it was the great Toronto fire, which I'm told by a friend much more knowledgeable than I, occurred in 1904 (like I stated before, I wasn't around then). My late father used to chuckle as he recalled anecdotes his father-in-law had tried to relate to him, drawing references back to "The Fire."

"You remember that, Al," was the tag.

My dad, who was born in 1925, of course did not.

I've seen a few instances like that recently at work. Some younger folks have joined the firm, and the conversation one day wandered around to mention the likes of famed Canadian broadcaster Gordon Sinclair. There were a couple of people who had no idea who were were talking about.

"There are some who referred to him as the Walter Cronkite of Canada," I mentioned, trying to be helpful. It didn't work.

So this list that has been compiled by the good people at Beloit College addresses what kind of memories people born in 1989 might be carrying as they embark on the world of higher learning. Actually, I have seen copies of this list from previous year, and I think I have written about it in the past.

First of all, a guy in my age category gets a bit of a start when he realizes that he was already being paid to edit newspapers before the newest crop of college kids was even born. Pass the Geritol.

The list points out these kids would have bee too young to remember the space shuttle Challenger blowing up or a time when there wasn't AIDS for people to worry about.

The list also pointed out they would not know what it's like to watch TV without a remote control. Just reading that line made me reflect that I don't think I would be able to change the channels on my TV without a remote. In fact, I can't say for sure that it even can be done. It's something I must look into during spare time, of which I have next to none.

These kids have only known popcorn that was made in the microwave. When I was a little kid, popcorn was a special treat my mother might make on a Saturday night during the hockey game. In later years, it took me a little while to figure out why these treats appeared more frequently (it took me a while to figure out the nuances of microwaving).

The list also pointed out kids entering college wouldn't know who Mork was or where he was from, nor would they know or care who shot J.R. I never watched Dallas, so I'm really not interested in J.R. either. Now if it were an issue involving Hill Street Blues, that might be a different matter. And if it was to do with Star Trek (the original series), I'd be able to hold my own with anybody.

These were some of the items on the list, but I did some looking up on my own, and found a few other things that the new batch of college kids might not remember, like the existence of a Berlin Wall, a time when there were no fax machines, the blowing up of the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland, days when Canada did not have a free trade agreement with the United States, Ben Johnson winning and losing an Olympic Gold medal or the days when only a very few people, if any, talked about things like global warming or the Internet.

These kids were all born after the lives of people like Elvis, John Lennon and Terry ox had ended. They have never seen the Leafs win the Stanley Cup.

Interestingly, last week's e-mail pointed to some differences between the way people talked in 1977 and 2007. I say it's interesting because 1977 was the year I graduated high school and started university. In those days, there were a lot of guys with long hair (including myself), something that's rather hard to find these days, unless I look in a mirror (where I see too damned much grey!) There were also references in my day to screwing the system, and now people talk of upgrading the system.

But I reflect on the time when I was born, realizing that Canada had a prime minister named Diefenbaker, Americans had a president named Eisenhower and the Pope was known by the name Pius. I have never known anyone but a queen on the throne of England, so consequently I have never seen a coronation.

So there are a couple of things that I have missed, but it's no big deal. And there are some things that I have seen that kids today likely won't. And in a lot of cases, they are lucky.

I went to school with a boy who had had polio. How many cases like that are around today. I went to school at a time when teacher were allowed to hit their students, some seeming to do it for their own amusement. And the elementary school Iattended segregated boys and girls in the school yard.

I wonder what kind of traumatic shocks kids born in 1989 are going to get when they read the list compiled by Beloit College in 2039.