The Beloit Mindset List has been released for the college class of 2016. I’m sure that many of you have heard about it from the media this week. If not, here are a couple of things regarding the class of 2016:

– They were born in 1994

– They can’t picture people carrying their luggage through airports rather than rolling it.

– They grew up, somehow, without the benefits of Romper Room

That’s just a smattering of what was on the list. I was curious to see what was on the list for my college class of 2002. Yes, I am dating myself, aren’t I? But you have to admit that in 1980 I made for a VERY cute baby! 😉

First off, after having read the list I have no idea where the person who wrote it thought that we all grew up. Half of the stuff on the list that I wasn’t supposed to have ever experienced, I did! Okay, so maybe it didn’t help that I grew up in a rural part of the country where you continued to use things until they didn’t work, or you didn’t run out and buy the latest and greatest because you couldn’t afford it. Let me just list for you some of the things that I took exception to on my list:

–Atari predates them, as do vinyl records…..  Not true. We had an Atari game system that my dad had purchased when it first came out. My sister and I played Space Invaders, Pac-Man, and Pong. As for vinyl records, my sister and I had a handful with childrens’ songs on them that we would put on and dance around the living room. We even had one of Bill Cosby’s comedy albums that we loved.

–They may never have heard of an 8-track, and chances are they’ve never heard or seen one… Again, not true. My dad had an 8-track player in his truck at one point and another one in the hay barn. When he would go out to work on the tractor he would often put in either CW McCall, Patsy Cline, or Dolly Parton. I think that he might have had a Merle Haggard 8-track as well.

–They cannot fathom what it was like not having a remote control… You’re looking at my parents’ first remote control. We lived out in the country and the cable company refused to run poles down our road because there weren’t enough people there. The only TV that we had until I was around 8 was NBC and PBS. We lived at the bottom of a hill so those were the only channels we could get with the antenna. Do you remember the box with the dial that you would turn in order to move the antenna? That rurring sound sure can take you back! We even had our TV in one of those old wooden console things that had doors that rolled around and closed in the front. When I was around 8 my parents got the satellite dish, one of those giant metal ones that you used to see in yards. That was when we got our first TV with a remote. Don’t laugh, but that’s the very TV that I’m using now in my house. It’s over 20 years old, but still works like a champ.

There are more of those and I could go on and on, but I won’t bore you with my simple country up-bringing. We had a rotary phone until I was 14. That was the year that we got off of the party line and finally had our own phone line! We no longer had to worry about hogging up the phone line when somebody called. You wouldn’t have to listen to grandma pick up the phone and tell you to get off because she had to make an important call. It was great!

As an aside… I like to check my blog stats to see how people are running across my posts. It will often tell me what search terms they are using to find it. Well, I was a bit surprised when I saw that the following search term was used today: “making meth with calamine lotion.” What??!! First off, why in the world would you think that you could use calamine lotion to make meth (I’ll admit that I have no idea how you even MAKE the stuff so maybe to a meth head it’s obvious why you would use it), but secondly, why would it lead to my blog? Then I realized… last year I was VERY angry because I had needed some more allergy medicine, but I couldn’t buy it. The government seems to think that if I buy too much of it then I will produce meth and either blow up my house or try to sell it. My post was all about how keeping me from getting my allergy medicine (and making me happy) wasn’t going to prevent somebody from making meth if they really wanted to do so. As you can see, the criminal mind is quite resourceful!

If you keep a blog, have you had any interesting search terms come up?