WTH???

Something happened at work today which was disturbing.  I'm not going to tell you that it rocked me to my core, because I've been getting other indications that this was coming.  Still, it was disturbing.

I received an email from an underwriter, asking me for more information on an antique/classic auto that was being referenced in an insurance policy.  I open up the file, and review the auto in question.  It's a 1980 GMC Pickup. 

A 1980 truck is an antique?  Let me get this straight.  A vehicle that came onto the market when I was old enough to drive it...is an antique??????????  Oh.  My.  Gosh. 

I should have known it was going to happen.  I've seen toys on the Antiques Road Show that were just like something I played with..  Yeah, and even the lunch box I carried to school...admired by some darn appraiser for its great condition, considering its age.  Sheesh.

I should have known when the cable-sweater tights that I wore as a girl came back into fashion.  Or when the "golden oldies" stations stopped playing Nat King Cole and started playing Three Dog Night.  I even heard Blondie on that station.  And Pat Benetar!

A "retro" look in a fashion magazine looks a lot like my high school year book.  Hmmm.  People get nostalgic over big hair, shoulder pads and dolphin shorts. ??  Oh, here's a good one:  One day my youngest son stopped by my office and saw the Brother electric typewriter in the back corner:, "What is THAT thing?".  Yeah, I know.  He had a similarly agog reaction to carbon paper.  "Why don't you just print it twice if you need two copies?"  What would he say if he know about mimeograph sheets that you had to correct with a little ether?  Or how excited I was when they came out with correction strips, instead of those horrid erasers that would erase a hole in your paper, or white-out which you had to wait for it to dry?  Do you remember when IBM invented the self-correcting "Selectric II"?  It would erase the last letter, if you hadn't typed anything past that point.  If I remember right, both pitches (10pt Pica and 12pt Elite) were available on interchangeable balls.  It was all that and a bag of chips, I'm telling you.

The first time I looked at one of those surveys and my age-range was over half-way through the list of choices, I should have noticed.  I definitely noticed it when a client sat at my desk one day (and I'm sorry to report this was quite a few years ago) to discuss professional liability insurance for his dentistry practice, and he was much younger than I.  He was old enough to have gone through all the years of school that it takes to be a dentist, start a practice, get married, have kids....  but he was still younger than me.

I called someone in her late 20s a "kid" the other day. 

I need to call that underwriter about the antique auto.  It might make me feel better if we can re-classify that.

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