This is how you finally recognize you are older than dirt.
To my surprise it is 22C or 23C every day in Vancouver and of course my shorts are in drawer in Saint Denis so off I went to the sixth floor of the upmarket Hudson Bay Company store and the Ted Baker of London counter. I picked out a pair of shorts and when the young man went off to get a pair my size I noticed that the Ted Baker counter was decorated with a few carefully selected items.
I asked the young woman at the counter to bring one down so I could take a picture.
“What are they she asked ?”
They are 35mm slides I told her.
“And do you look at them through the magnifying glass ?” she asked
No I replied you put a roll of film in a camera like one of these on display on the other side of the counter. You could take 18 or 36 pictures, then you dropped the film canister off at a store and they sent it off and had your pictures printed. A week later you returned for your photos and if you liked some of them enough you paid to have them turned into 35mm slides. When you had enough slides you bought a projector, loaded the slides in a drawer in the projector, invited friends over, turned out the lights and projected the slides on the wall.
“Really !!”
Her colleague returned with the shorts and I went into the changing room, the walls were fairly thin so I heard her repeat, with an air of incredulity what I had just explained.
I came out and started laughing which really confused her. I assured her I wasn’t in anyway laughing at her but I found it hilarious that at 76 years of age I had finally met someone so young they had had no clue what my generations hi-tech had been.
Then her colleague a very nice young man stepped in and explained that a few weeks earlier he had been working at the watch counter on the ground floor and a young customer had asked to look at an analogue watch. Looked at it but couldn’t grasp how it worked and when he explained it to him asked why anyone would want one when there are smart watches.
So there you go Older Than Dirt.