Auld Lang Syne, anyone?

[firecat]

Recycling an old post from Facebook:

"RT @ ThatEricAlper: Without revealing your actual age, what something you remember that if you told a younger person they wouldn't understand?"

Here’s my entry. I’ve heard that reading the time on an analog clock is no longer a universal skill. So I think some young people would find it hard to understand where the phrase “watch my six” comes from.

(This entry brought to you by Faith Hunter’s Shining Smith series, a post-apocalyptic story in which a woman infected by mesmerizing nanobots runs a junkyard with the help of a clowder of sentient, telepathic cats. She says it a lot in combat situations…not to the cats though.)

Comments

In the radio business, we talk of "cutting a spot" or "cutting a newscast"

[necturus]

That's an expression so old that even most people of my generation don't understand its origin; it dates back to a time when the only way to record sound was to use a record cutter.

Nowadays expressions such as "taping an interview" are becoming equally obscure; while I personally own a reel-to-reel tape recorder, they haven't been used commonly in at least twenty years.

Re: In the radio business, we talk of "cutting a spot" or "cutting a newscast"

[firecat]

Ooh, yeah, I didn't know the "cutting" reference!

I used to tape stuff from the TV by setting my shoebox-sized cassette recorder on a chair in front of it. [ETA: I was taping the audio only, pre-VCR.]