I found the quote years ago, simple words reminding me to cherish my elders and remember that tomorrow is never promised to anyone: “Love your parents. We are so busy growing up, we often forget they are also growing old.” But of course, I have my own idea of ‘old’ and never thought of the term applying to me anytime soon. Until, of course, the girls came along. Now the word ‘old’ is aimed in my direction at least once a week. Dad catches his share of doses too, often with ‘prehistoric’ thrown in for an extra level of shade: “Wow, you two are the oldest parents of anyone in our class!” “You didn’t know you could ____ on your phone? Gee Daddy, you’re so prehistoric!” “You’ve never heard of (insert current fave here)? Old people these days!”

Yes, those are actual sentences bandied about in our home. Whether they impact this year’s Christmas lists remains to be seen, but I guess aging can be a lot like beauty: resting within, and dependent upon, the eye of the beholder. Besides, if the following traits make me ‘old,’ then I will proudly embrace the title……

—wearing afros and bellbottoms within the era first became popular in: do I get extra points for corduroys and apple hats?

—playing with Lite-Brites, View-Masters and Speak-N-Spells (thanks Mom!). I also read books that remained silent and didn’t require downloads.

— remembering long-distance family trips when 8-tracks filled in for fading radio stations from state to state: no one enjoyed hearing the same albums for hours at a time, but my knowledge of music by The Commodores, Isley Brothers and Earth, Wind & Fire is practically encyclopedic (thanks Daddy!).

—waiting for hours in front of a ‘boom box’ for the radio to play a favorite song, cassette tape timed just-so and fingers poised above the ‘record’ button. ‘Downloading’ applied to the most advanced of robotics and mainframe computers, not the long-awaited New Edition remix.

—watching soap operas in the summertime, with Grandma or at home. The Bold & The Beautiful, along with The Young & The Restless, are some of the few still around. Today’s reality stars can only hope to become as conniving as a Jill Abbott or as suave as the perpetual ‘playa-playa’ Victor Newman!

—three words: dial-up internet. Kids who fretted and gnashed their teeth through the recent youtube.com outage cannot fathom the agony of waiting for a signal and avoiding phone calls just for a few precious minutes of screen time.

—VH1, MTV and BET focusing at least half of their airtime to (gasp) music-focused programming. Enough said.

—TVs that actually sounded off after programming for a dozen channels ended for the evening and news that you digested in segments rather than real time.

—the ability to enjoy performers at a time without choosing sides and enduring imaginary ‘beefs’: Whitney Houston didn’t talk trash publicly about Aretha Franklin, and Luther Vandross didn’t corner Babyface at award shows threatening beatdowns over who said and sold what. For better or worse, social media has eroded the showbiz mystique that many entertainers once enjoyed.

—finally, hitting the planet right before hip-hop did: nothing will ever compare to watching a cultural phenomenon grow and evolve at the same rate as you do. They may call me ‘prehistoric,’ but what other parent in their peer group has witnessed The Fugees, Busta Rhymes and A Tribe Called Quest all on the same day? Like Alicia Keys once sang, no one.

I still envy my childrens’ instant access to what life has to offer, just as I still envy the fact that one of my parents’ date nights involved the Jackson Five. CJ and I only hope that we’re here to watch their chagrin—and laugh— when their future kids do the same.