Memories are short for 18-year-old college kids
What
boomers take for granted, teens
learn in history class
They might be a whiz at computers or be able to program VCRs with their eyes closed. To them, "industrial" refers to music, not factories. They’re familiar with Friends and Party of Five. They are likely able to explain environmental issues or anarchism, or tell you why they choose to be vegetarians.
But there are some things students entering college this year don’t know. Or don’t remember: their memories started kicking in well after 1980.
Unless their parents haven’t upgraded their telephone equipment for a long time, they likely don’t remember using rotary-dial phones. They don’t remember when not every Canadian home came equipped with a video machine and a desk-top computer. Neither do they remember when all we had was black and white TV–on two or three channels.
They don’t remember–gasp–life before McDonald’s. (We remember when McDonald’s boasted serving 12 million. Now it’s up to "billions and billions.")
Eight tracks? "Yes, I remember them," says one 18-year-old I queried. Turns out her parents had owned a machine, and she used the old tapes as toys.
In the world of science, they don’t remember when the world’s first "test-tube baby," Elizabeth Brown, was born–in England in 1978. Elizabeth herself is now 20 years old.
They don’t remember when AIDS was discovered in the early1980s. As far as they’re concerned, the disease has always been a part of life.
They were still in the womb when Terry Fox made his heroic run for cancer in 1980. Fortunately, Fox’s legacy–including a mountain, monuments, schools, streets, and an annual run named after him–has continued to inspire Canadians young and old.
In the realm of popular culture, they don’t remember the day Elvis died, in July 1977, or what they were doing when they heard John Lennon was shot, December 1980.
They were only babies when the wedding of the century took place between Charles and Diana in the summer of 1981. Tragically, they do remember, all too vividly, the royal couple’s divorce and Diana’s death.
In Canadian politics, Joe Clark’s nine months as prime minister in 1978-9 is an era beyond their ken. They know nothing of the frenzy of Trudeaumania in 1968.They can’t recall when Prime Minister Trudeau invoked The War Measures Act–they only know about it from studying history.
On the world front, they don’t remember when a former movie star named Ronald Reagan was elected president of the United States. They were only six when the Challenger exploded shortly after takeoff, nine when the Berlin Wall came down and 10 when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.
In sports, don’t expect them to reminisce about the Montreal Olympics–1976 was four years before they were born. They don’t remember when Wayne Gretzky started his career, and as for that famous hockey goal shot by Paul Henderson when Canada faced Russia way back in 1972, they for sure can’t remember that. (But then, neither can I: I was tucked away in a Bible college library, safe from outside influences.)
But does it matter that the things the boomer generation accept as a matter of course are foreign to brand new college students? It shouldn’t. All too soon, they’ll be compiling their own lists to show off to their children or students. After all, babies born in 1998 won’t remember anything about a sheep named Dolly.
