Odd Moments

I had forgotten how funny The Odd Couple could be. I remember watching it on prime time TV fifty years ago, and have recently been watching it regularly on the Decades channel. Interestingly, I have yet to see the movie or stage show on which it was based. Such as that is, was, or evermore shall be, I like the show, then and now, although perhaps I didn't get all the jokes as a pre-teen.

But that's not really why I bring it up. What strikes me most is the revelation that maybe I'm living what old people lived, well, fifty years ago. I'm seeing what was once new to me but is now aged. Quite aged. Very significantly aged.

To offer a frame of reference, I became a Beatles fan after I bought Nowhere Man off the oldies rack at the downtown Detroit Kresge's in 1973 That on its own should age me. It had been released as a single in 1966.  So in my 13 year old mind, seven years was old. Very old. Now, I watch something seven times that age, a show I watched when I was 13, and think, that's not so old.

So I suppose in watching Tony Randall and Jack Klugman I find myself feeling what I think my grandparents may have felt, say, in 1972 listening to music from 1925. There's only problem.

I don't feel that old.