My Back Pages or “The Grown Up Meme”

[jesse_the_k]

here's Jackson Browne & Joan Osborne doing a lively cover of Noble-Prize-winning Bob Dylan's song, with lyrics on screen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6egCk43qf4

Thanks to torachan (via laceblade) for importing this meme from Tumblr.

1. How many jobs have you had, and which was your favorite?
sign language interpreter of nine paid jobs
signage designer/producer of more than nine volunteer positions
2. When did you first connect to other people via computers?
In 1972, working side-by-side as H.S. student at the paper-tape-punch keyboard of a PDP-11.
3. Were/are you on AOL? Compuserve? LJ? Dreamwidth? A Listserv? Other?
On CompuServe for work; on AOL for kicks; my initial internet access was asynchronous via a local dialup BBS. For a decade, my internet life was on listservs (related to Bruce Cockburn fandom; my impairments; disability accommodations, activism, and academic disability studies). I moderated the Mediatalk list that grew out of the Ragged Edge's 1999 May summit to encourage cooperation among disability-issue journalists. I was a regular at the Wheelchair Junkie before 2000. WisCon brought me to LJ; I moved to DW when it opened. I also spend some time on Metafilter.
4. If you went to college, does your major match your career/current job?
All the technical skills I learned as an Architectural Drafter have been outmoded. Design discipline, however, is for ever and always. The graphic and lettering skills I brought to this course were sharpened, and I've always put those to use.
5. Have you had a mammogram? Colonoscopy?
Two of each. Also hysterosalpingogram and bladder cystoscopy, which I recommend against.
6. When did you get your first cell phone? What was it like? (Did it have a screen? Could you text? Was it a brick or flip?)
Paratransit riders need phone calls. Public phones were disappearing rapidly in 2007, so I got a Tracfone brick. Switched to a Net10 brick to get text signal inside WisCon's hotel. Last month I upgraded to a 3G brick. I prefer texting, so all had that capability.
7. When did your family first acquire a color TV?
Sometime before the Watergate hearings.
8. When did your family acquire a second TV?
That was the b&w superseded by #7
9. Did you ever own “designer jeans”?
No.
10. Have you ever been to a disco?
Yes! I learned to “do the hustle,” and hustled with various folks, at the local gay bar and at the feminist coop restaurant.
11. How many places (towns, states, countries) have you lived in?
Five in US; one each in UK, Denmark, and Greece.
12. Are you parents still living?
No.
13. Have any of your contemporary friends died? (i.e., people more or less you age.)
Two to suicide, two to car crashes, one to cancer, one to heart attack. Many more in my parents' generation.
14. Do you have any gray hairs?
Tens.
15. Did you or your family own a Betamax?
Nope
16. How did you spend New Year's Eve 1999/2000?
Listened to the new year GMT via BBC World Service, went to bed.
17. What's the oldest article of clothing you still wear?
My mother's soft, worn sleep cap.
18. Do you eat your vegetables?
I love my vegetables, especially leafy greens, and peas, and beans, and cukes, and brussels sprouts, and squash, and on and on
19. Are the privileges of adulthood worth the responsibilities?
Absolutely.
20. Do you feel like an adult?
Occasionally.
21. Is youth wasted on the young?
Mine was. I wish I could combine the energy, optimism, & stamina of my 15–24 year old self with the insight & experience of my 61-year-old now. With credentials (from the university I lacked patience to attend) I could have had more impact on the assistive technology field. Fortunately, there were older wiser minds around to guide me well.

Comments

[isis]

Wow, you have lived in many countries! Are you American (I have always assumed you were), or from one of those other countries?

I like this set of questions - definitely more appropriate for women of our generation than the usual meme fodder.

[jesse_the_k]

Yes, these questions do assume less about class and age than the average meme.

I'm definitely American: my parents were first-generation Jews from Philadelphia (their parents left the Pale of Settlement in 1905).

Traveling father was an academic: Fulbrights funded two trips, and a consultancy for the third. I was fortunate to tag along on other voyages—Israel, Austria, Germany and that city outside of place and time, San Francisco.

Do you happen to know how to create a posting template: all I know is that "textarea" is involved.

[isis]

I don't, sorry!

[lilysea]

I really like that icon.

Is it a picture of you (when younger) ?

[jesse_the_k]

Yep, that's me age 10, modeling a Russian fur hat my father brought back from USSR. Seems I've always been all about the hats.