We have a 19-year-old who works in our office and I said to him "that's an E-Ticket ride" about something I don't remember now.  He laughed politely and went on his day.  On Friday we were having lunch and he confessed that he really didn't get my joke about the E-Ticket.  He said something like he didn't know what a plane ticket/boarding pass had to do with what we were talking about.  I explained I was talking about something to do with Disneyland in the city of Orange, CA. He laughed politely again.

You see, in So. Cal. everyone who was a kid before 1983 and went to Disneyland would understand the reference.  Back then they would give you a booklet with tear-off tickets when you entered the park.  They were labeled A, B, C, D and E.   They gave you pages of A and B tickets but only like a page of E tickets.  E tickets were reserved for the best rides in the park.  Space Mountain was an E ticket ride.  You always ran out of E tickets first and you would save the A-D tickets to use on another visit, but you never ran out of those.  In the mid-'80s, they did away with the ticket system and went to a "daily pass" system where you paid one fee to get a pass that went around your neck, which allowed you to stand in long lines as a result.

So, this is the third young person to whom I've had to explain what I meant by the term E-Ticket.  He was born after the switch and the term has no significance to him. That would be the same for anyone who reached or will reach legal drinking age in this decade.

I have a nephew who is six who likes to play with my cell phone.  To him, "dialing a number" means pushing buttons on a cell or walk-around phone.  We were in my folks' garage and the crap they have piled up in there dates back to the Carter administration (as in President Carter). I moved an old dial phone - a phone with a dial heel you have to put your finger into and turn get your number to transmit based on the number of clicks the phone sends out.  He recognized that it was a phone because it had a receiver, however, when he played with it, he pushed his finger into the holes .  I had to explain how it worked because he had never seen one before.

Also, I had to explain what "riding shotgun" meant.  You call "shotgun!" and you get to ride in the front passenger seat of the car while the rest of your loser siblings or friends have to ride in the back seat.  The term originated from the Wells Fargo Bank stagecoach days.  Back before they had armored cars, when horses pulled stagecoaches full of money to banks in the west, they had a driver on top, up front controlling the horses.  The guy who sat to his right carried a shotgun to blow away any bad guys who tried to rob the stagecoach.  So, to ride shotgun today means to sit to the right of the driver in a car.

I'm certain there are more of these outdated references out there.  I'm just feeling old and want to see if any of you get the above references, or know of any others.

You should be more like Cantrip.



Twitchy: "I pulled a Cantrip . . ."
GivePeaceAChance: "If the Tempest had nipples, I'd pinch that shit."
Xylicon: "I'm about to deliver my [Richard] in your face for posting that stupid shit. "
WDF?: "He keeps reaming me... night after night... I'm rather sore."
GivePeaceAChance: "OMG MY NIPS ARE HARD"
llenta: "cantrip, you fail!!!"
Filliam H. Muffman: "i'm on top of dick"