It was when I was in class to learn how to be a drone, er employee, in a large local call center, that I realized I was getting older. How was I so informed? By my young classmates, who understood not a word of my cultural references.
If you have never heard the genius lyrics to the smash hit "Hooka Tooka My Soda Cracker" (I used hooka tooka to find out who stole my desk calendar) then you're really unlikely to relate to a "veeblefetzer" reference cleverly dropped while discussing a computer program you've never heard of in your life. All about veeblefetzers:
Important Veeblefetzer information
Now it was my favorite reading material in seventh and eighth grade, Mad Magazine -- a detour on the way to the more mature National Lampoon -- which introduced me to the aforementioned veeblefetzer. This has been a handy word for me to reach for throughout my life. The more the memory loss sets in, the more I find myself uttering it.
And in this training class I first had to acknowledge that my vocabulary is entirely too full of "cultural references." However, I don't feel too much like the "Lone Ranger" (there's another!) because I could spout "Seinfeld" lines and plots and be entirely understood. Sadly, a younger friend of mine had never, ever watched Seinfeld. You might say he felt like a cake someone left out in the rain.
