Age to length of words ratio

 We went to see the film Air, set in 1984, about the deal that Nike made with Michael Jordan for their most famous shoe.

“Oh my, that looks so old,” I whispered in the Long Suffering Husband’s ear. 

“We are old,” he mouthed back.

I have begun to be aware that, even if I do see myself as a little girl in pigtails, whose legs don’t quite reach the floor, I am now an old lady. Children at school now compare me to their grandmother. However, when movies that are set in the years when you became an adult are made with faded grainy film and highlight the oddities of the age, such as pagers, green font on computer screens and phone boxes, you know that you are suddenly history.

I remember my mum’s indignation when my son had a Primary school history topic of the Sixties. ‘I’m not history!’ she said.

You know that you have become history when you are unable to use clipped words.

When I was in the 3rd year juniors, my teacher, had reached this age.

“John, did your mother have the baby? I thought so. I saw her with the perambulator this morning.”

We all nudged each other and giggled at the use of such an arcane word. Why she couldn’t say pram like everyone else we just couldn’t fathom. 

A famous author wrote on Twitter that she had become the subject of ridicule among her young nieces and nephews and so had been desperately trying to say human, rather than human being but to no avail.

Recently, my daughter has picked up on one of my linguistic quirks. 

“Why do you say telephone? No one says telephone. Everyone says phone. Have you always said telephone?”

Since then I have been trying but I just can’t say phone and that is proof that I am old.

I have decided to make a list of commonly clipped words to see if I’m old or guilty of  sesquipedalianism in general.

Television, refrigerator, omnibus, taxicab, motorbike, hamburger, aeroplane, gymnasium, public house, examination, vegetarian, influenza, veterinary surgeon, memorandum, convict, referee, statistics, teenager, submarine, dormitory, graduate, limousine, mathematics, preparatory school, fabulous, submarine, automobile, laboratory, photograph, luncheon, spectacles, pianoforte….

Oh dear. Time for my bath chair….I bet you’ve never heard of one of those either.