5 Things Today's New Teachers Will Never Understand

Last week, I saw this tweet and it got me thinking about how old I feel in the teachers' lounge when I make a reference to something from my youth and all I get are blank stares from the young teachers born in the late 1980s and '90s, like when I made a reference to the movie Stripes. 

So, here are a bunch of other things from my youth they will probably never understand.

Without revealing your age, what's something you remember from your youth that today's youth wouldn't understand ?

— Kelly Thompson (@FantasyFballNut) February 8, 2020

5. How cool you felt reading Rolling Stone.  For me, there was just something really exciting about discovering new music before everybody else did. Plus, the writing on every subject in it was some of the best available. One of my favorites was PJ O'Rourke, a political satirist who became their foreign affairs lead. He actually came to Hillsdale and spoke about covering the Clinton presidency. It was before anybody knew who Monica Lewinsky was, but it was still tremendously memorable. Rolling Stone is still alive and I check-in online every once in a while but there was just something special about poring over an article on the emerging Seattle-sound or a hot new band and its upcoming tour. 

4. McDonald's Birthday Parties. I am not sure what it was that made McDonald's so icky in the eyes of our youth. Back in the late '70s and early '80s though, having your birthday party at Mickey D's was a pretty rad experience. I still remember when the richest kid in 1st Grade, Chucky Shrader, had his 7th birthday blow-out at the Three Rivers, Michigan McDonald's. Mind you, this was even before they started building their PlayPlaces. It was just trays and trays of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, shakes, and whatever that orange un-carbonated drink is. It was such a big deal, the Three Rivers paper even published a blurb on the society page. My mom still has the clipping. Apparently one can still book birthday parties at McDonald's. 

Bill Frakes photo by Laura Heald

3. Getting Sports Illustrated every Thursday in the mail. Just like Rolling Stone, Sports Illustrated was a huge part of my adolescent reading consumption. Growing up in the '80s as a sports fan meant you could always rely on there being a new issue of SI in your mailbox every Thursday afternoon. SI featured the best sportswriters in America and equally great photographers. This was before instant in-depth coverage of every sporting event on earth. ESPN Sportscenter was a part of my morning routine, but you were still basically limited to 90 seconds of highlights and a score. The three most fun hours of my professional life came in 2011 when I became an Apple Distinguished Educator and SI photographer Bill Frakes not only was on hand to shoot headshots of all of us, he took us out into the desert to learn the art of nighttime photography called light painting. The instruction was awesome but I also ended up riding out to and back from the Salt River with Bill and long-time associate Laura Heald. For two hours in the car, they told twenty years worth of SI photoshoot stores. The most memorable stories were Bill recalling when John McEnroe came over to the photo pit at Wimbledon and started drinking Frakes' Coke in the middle of the match and Laura describing Chinese government officials being less than thrilled with them during the Beijing Olympics for accessing restricted areas of the Great Wall. What I found most amazing was that I could describe a picture from 20 years ago and Bill and Laura could not only remember it, but tell me who took it, and often its backstory. Yes, SI still exists, but the thrill of its weekly arrival will never be the same.

Sports Illustrated delivered sports in HD before 1080p was a thing. Bill Frakes photo

2. These three Walmart brands were once the essence of cool. A little tear forms in the corner of my eye every time I am in Walmart.......and.....I see Ocean Pacific, Bongo, or Starter logos. 

All three brands at one time were the gold standard of cool. OP burst on the scene in the early '80s as the popularity of surfwear grew. Growing up in Arizona meant we were the first stop eastward for trends coming out of California. Never before had I been such the envy of my Michigan cousins than when I came to visit in head-to-toe OP and they were scrambling in the Midwest to find stores that carried it. Even though the inseam length of OP corduroy shorts made them darn near obscene, they were insanely popular. So was Magnum P.I. and other than Larry Bird, nobody rocked the short shorts like Tom Selleck. Bongo Jeans was just one of many denim brands to be popular throughout the late '80s. At Casa Grande Union High School, the Bongo denim skirt was exceptionally well-liked from 1986 through the end of the decade. Starter came along at the end of the '80s and made an epic ascent in the world of NCAA and professional sports team apparel. As fans flocked to buy gear from establishment-challenging teams like UNLV, the LA Raiders, and Michigan's Fab Five, hip hop artists further fueled a craze by wearing Starter gear on stage, but especially in their music videos. Things got so intense that lives were even tragically lost in robberies involving Starter jackets. Popularity is terribly fickle and Walmart has long made it a practice to swoop in and buy once-popular yet struggling brands. The mega-chain slaps those labels on their own lines of apparel and the results are rarely pretty. Just look at how lame this current line of OP gear is. 

If you were lucky enough to hang onto your original OP, Bongo, or Starter gear it could fetch you up to three-figures on the vintage market. 

1. Junior high and dances in the dark. Maybe this one should just be the concept of "junior high" in general because the vast majority of U.S. school districts have switched to the middle school concept. Our junior high was just 7th and 8th grade as opposed to modern middle schools that span from grades five or six through eight. It was basically early high school. We started every day in homeroom and then switched for six more class periods just like a high school schedule. I am pretty sure that our current middle schools take better care of kids, but we sure felt like big shots getting our locker assignments and picking up our schedule of classes. The big time pep assemblies with the band playing and cheerleaders making a tunnel for us game-jersey-wearing football players were only topped by the Friday night dances...in the dark. I know that horrifies a lot of people to visualize 12 to 14-year-old trying to make "some front-page teenage news". Yes, most dances started out with girls on one side of the cafeteria staring across at the boys staring across at the girls but the right fast song like say, Prince's Let's Go Crazy, would get everybody on the floor. I can still remember the screams of girls running to the dance floor when they heard that organ and  "Dearly beloved-loved-loved...We are gathered here today..." Follow that up with a slow one like You're The Inspiration by Chicago and it would officially be a party. Maybe the concept of the junior high dance isn't that hard to fathom thanks to Stranger Things 2 and the excellent closing "Snow Ball" scene. The gym may have been a little over-decorated in the Netflix gem, but for the most part, producers really nailed the look and feel of the junior high dance. 

Were there awkward and scary moments? Absolutely, but we all survived even when your huge crush ended up sneaking away to the baseball field bleachers with someone else. It's not like it still bugs me or anything, really.

Someday all of the new teachers will be the old coots in the lounge getting blank stares from the newbies every time they say something like, "I was so in love with Troy Bolton." or "I still have no idea how I ever taught the morning after that Lions Super Bowl parade." Okay, maybe that's a little too far-fetched. 

Don't take this just as a "back in my day" post. Yes, it's full of nostalgia but think of it as a little bit of motivation to slow down and really enjoy the "now" because we don't naturally do that enough. I don't know who said it, but I recently heard somebody say, "Wouldn't it be great if when we were in the good old days, we knew they were the good old days?"

 Here's to making all days the "good old days".