25 Things That Will Make You Feel So Old

The "future" in Back to the Future is now in the past.

For the most part, time passes without notice. We just live day to day, feeling more or less the same. Sometimes the only way to realize that you are, in fact, much older than you thought is when you stop to take stock of how much the world has changed around you. The things that still seem brand-new in your mind are now bona fide artifacts, and the future that once seemed so impossibly far away is actually, well, right now. From technology that's deeply outdated to the ages of your favorite child stars, here are 25 things guaranteed to make you realize how quickly time has passed.

1
The Karate Kid is now older than Mr. Miyagi.

the karate kid movie still, feel old
IMDB/Columbia Pictures

Ralph Macchio, who played Daniel LaRusso in The Karate Kid, was supposed to be a teen in the 1984 movie. But he was actually 22.

Today, Macchio is all grown up—so much, in fact, that he's now older than Mr. Miyagi was at the time. Pat Morita, who played Miyagi, was a mere 52 years old back then, while Macchio is currently 57. How is this possible!

2
Kids graduating high school in 2019 were born in the 2000s.

divorce over 40
Shutterstock

For some of us, it's hard to imagine that the 1990s weren't just a few years ago. But consider this: Most teenagers getting their high school diplomas this year were born in 2001. So, when they hear that Prince song "1999," they think, "That was two years before I was born!" Not OK!

3
Bart Simpson is pushing 40.

simpsons episode bart simpson
IMDB/Jim Henson Productions

Bart may perennially be eight years old on The Simpsons, but there is major clue as to how old he'd actually be if the series' characters aged like the rest of us.

In an episode from Season 3, called "I Married Marge" (which aired December 26, 1991), we learn that Marge first became pregnant after she and Homer went on a date to see The Empire Strikes Back, which was released in May 1980. That means Bart was likely born in early 1981, which means that today he'd be 38 years old. Just two more years and the kid who once implored the world to "eat my shorts" will be in his 40s.

4
Baby Jessica has two kids of her own.

President George H. W. Bush meeting Baby Jessica McClure at the White House in 1989
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration

Jessica McClure was just 18 months old when she fell down a well, 22 feet below the surface, in her aunt's backyard in Midland, Texas in 1987. We all watched on TV as rescuers worked around the clock to free Baby Jessica, and they finally pulled her out after 58 agonizing hours. We'll always remember her as "Everybody's Baby," even though she's anything but a baby these days. She's 33 years old and has two kids of her own. Yes, Baby Jessica has two babies. Actually, even they're not babies any more—her older child is 12 years old, and the younger one is 10. (How is time moving this fast?)

5
The future in Back to the Future: Part II is now four years in the past.

screen shot from back to the future part II, feel old
IMDB/Universal Pictures

Who can forget the crowd-pleasing comedy Back to the Future: Part II, when Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) take the time-traveling DeLorean into the future? They picked a date that, at the time, seemed ridiculously far away. Who knew what the world would look like on October 21, 2015? Well, four years ago, we found out.

Yes, we've long passed the year deemed "the future" in the 1989 movie. And unlike the 2015 they imagined at the time, we still don't have ejection seats, self-drying jackets, bionic brain implants, or hoverboards that actually hover.

6
All GeoCities web pages have been gone for a decade.

old fashioned computer station - funniest jokes
Shutterstock

If you built a website in the '90s, you probably used the host site GeoCities. It was a beautiful era of pixelated graphics, animated GIFs, and broken HTML. And it's all just… gone now.

Yahoo! bought GeoCities in a multi-billion dollar deal in 1999, and then closed everything down a decade later. All 300 billion pages, just poof, up and vanished. You can still find snapshots of those old sites via the Way Back Machine. But that's kind of like hearing a song of your youth introduced on a classic rock radio show as a "golden oldie."

7
The movie Sixteen Candles is old enough to run for president.

sixteen candles movie still, 1980s home decor
IMDB/Universal Pictures

If you geeked out over the '80s antics of lovable teens Sam, Jake, and Farmer Ted, we've got some sobering news for you. Sixteen Candles, the quintessential 1984 John Hughes comedy about turning 16, has crossed a shocking threshold. The movie is now officially old enough to run for president. Yep, to be eligible for the office of president, you must be a citizen of the United States (and Sixteen Candles, while not technically a person, was definitely made in the U.S. of A) and be at least 35 years old (which as of May 4, 2019, it will be).

8
The median age of the Traveling Wilburys was 44.

Bob Dylan, live music
Shutterstock

When the Traveling Wilburys released their first album in 1988, they seemed like old men to anyone under 30 at the time. But it turns out they weren't nearly as old as we all thought. The youngest was Tom Petty, who was just 37 at the time. Roy Orbison was the oldest, at 52. The others—Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, and George Harrison—were all in their 40s. In fact, the median age of the Traveling Wilburys was a mere 44 years old, which hardly seems old to us today.

9
Kids haven't grown up with Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in almost 18 years.

Fred Rogers
Alamy

From 1968 until 2001, beloved children's series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood taught generations of kids about kindness and imagination. Though Fred Rogers hosted almost a thousand episodes, he (unfortunately) couldn't live forever. So, anyone born in the early 2000s or later probably can't hum along to the melody that begins, "It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood, a beautiful day for a neighbor. Would you be mine? Could you be mine?"

10
Mick Jagger is a great-grandfather.

mick jagger rolling stones over 50, celebrity grandparents

Yes, you read that right. Mick Jagger, who wrote and performed such bluesy rock hits as "Tumbling Dice" and "Brown Sugar" in the early '70s, is a great-grandfather—as in, his kid has a kid who has a kid.

As of this year, he has two great-granddaughters, Ezra and Romy, both belonging to his 26-year-old granddaughter Assisi Jackson, daughter of his eldest child, Jade Jagger. Some day in the not too distant future, Ezra and Romy will be able to say, "You like that song 'Start Me Up'? Yeah, my great-grandfather wrote that."

11
Furby is old enough to drink alcohol legally.

Furby 1990s Facts

When the animatronic toy Furby first came on the market in 1998, nobody was entirely sure what it was supposed to be. It looked like an owl crossed with a hamster dipped in radioactive paint. But whatever species it might've been, it was obviously a baby (or a toddler, at most). But now, 21 years have since passed. And you know what that means: Furby, whatever animal it's supposed to be, is legally old enough to drink. Every Furby ever made could be sipping on gin-and-tonics right now—and there's nothing any of us can do about it. (And yes, we know they're not real.)

12
Sabrina the Teenage Witch is a 43-year-old mom.

screenshot from sabrina the teenage witch tv show, feel old
IMDB/Hartbreak Films

When the TV series Sabrina the Teenage Witch first hit airwaves in the late '90s, we could scarcely imagine its star, Melissa Joan Hart, becoming an adult someday, much less a parent with her own teen witches. Well, both of those things have happened.

The series began with Sabrina learning she has magical powers on her 16th birthday. Now, Hart is 43, and she's the mother of three sons, Tucker, Mason, and Braydon. The oldest, Mason, is 13, which means he's just a few years away from learning whether or not he has magical powers too!

13
If you can't vote, you've also never licked a postage stamp.

postage stamps

Postage stamps have been slowly transitioning from moisture-activated adhesives—the kind you have to lick—to the far more popular self-adhesive stamps. Beginning in 2002, the vast majority of new stamps issued by the U.S. Postal service were self-adhesive, and saliva-dependent stamps were completely discontinued in 2015.

Of course, licking stamps is gross. But it was also part of the ritual of mailing a letter. Having a glue taste on your tongue builds character! (Or maybe it doesn't, and we're just sad that another part of the world as we knew it is slipping away.)

14
John Candy has been dead longer than the span of his acting career.

John Candy celebrity deaths
Vicki L. Miller/Shutterstock

Beloved comedian John Candy starred in some of the greatest movie comedies of the '70s and '80s, including Stripes, SplashThe Great Outdoors, Spaceballs, and Uncle Buck. He died of cardiac arrest in 1994, at the far too young age of 43, while working on the film Wagons East. That was 25 years ago.

Now, compare that with his entire acting career—which lasted from his uncredited role in the 1973 movie Class of '44, to the last of his movies to be released posthumously, Canadian Bacon, in 1995. That's 22 years. That means we've reached a sad milestone, where Candy has been dead longer than he was famous on Earth.

15
Eminem's daughter, Hailie, is as old as her father's recording career.

Eminem in white t-shirt at 1999 Source Awards
Shutterstock

Eminem' daughter, Hailie, was a muse on more than a few occasions. She was mentioned, either directly or indirectly, in at least 22 songs by her dad, including "Hailie's Song," "My Dad's Gone Crazy," "Kim," "97 Bonnie & Clyde," "Beautiful," and "My Darling."

The girl who Eminem once asked in a song, "Don't look so upset, why you actin' bashful? Don't you want to help da-da build a sand castle?" is now 23 years old—which just so happens to be as many years as her dad has been making music. Eminem's first record, Infinite, was released in 1996, meaning his recording career is the same age as his daughter (who, by the way, now has more than a million followers on Instagram).

16
There's a children's book called Who Was Steve Irwin?

steve irwin celebrity deaths
Featureflash Photo Agency

To us, these books make sense when they're about historical figures, like Who Was Gandhi? and Who Was Abraham Lincoln?

But the Crocodile Hunter? Seriously? We're still having a hard time coming to grips with the idea that Steve Irwin died at all, at the horrifically young age of 44 in 2006. Even though it's been more than a decade since, it still feels like yesterday, and seeing a book with a title like Who Was Steve Irwin?, with an emphasis on the "was," makes us feel very sad. And old. Very old.

17
Justin Bieber is as old as the Playstation.

Justin Bieber, style
Shutterstock

Justin Bieber, who gave us hits like "Sorry" and "Baby," was born on March 1, 1994. And the very first Playstation, which gave us hits like Tekken, The Need for Speed, and Final Fantasy VI, was also born in 1994. (And if you're a Nintendo fan, Super Metroid also came out that year.) The idea that those things happened at the same time is enough to make you need to lie down on the floor and stare at the ceiling until the existential panic passes.

18
The dancing Ooga Chaka baby from Ally McBeal would have graduated from college.

Ally McBeal dances in pajamas with naked animated baby
20th Century Fox Television / YouTube

Remember that crazy animated baby that did an endless cha-cha type dance on Ally McBeal in the late 1990s? Yeah, we do too.

We all eventually moved on and forgot about the dancing baby, and while we weren't paying attention, that baby went and grew up. Well, not technically. It's not a real baby. But if it wasn't just computer animation, in the 22 years that have passed, the Ooga Chaka baby would officially be an adult now, possibly one that's just graduated from college and started a LinkedIn page.

19
Monica from Friends is old enough to be a Golden Girl.

Monica Miami Vice CD Funniest Jokes From Friends
IMDB/Warner Bros. Television

The lovable gang of 20-somethings on Friends felt so relatable. They were just like us, struggling with relationships and careers and big life challenges. The show's been off the air since 2004, but the actors, of course, continue to age. This June, Courteney Cox—who played Monica Geller—will be turning 55, which just so happens to be Blanche Devereaux's (Rue McClanahan) age during the first season of The Golden Girls in 1985.

20
The Taco Bell chihuahua has been dead for 10 years.

chihuahua dog
Shutterstock

The adorable (and anthropomorphic) pup who appeared in dozens of Taco Bell commercials during the late '90s was once the most famous dog in fast food. The commercials—and the accompanying beguiling catchphrase, "Yo quiero Taco Bell!"—have been gone for several decades now. But we all just assumed the Mexican food-loving chihuahua was still alive and well, consuming far too many chalupas for her own good.

Sadly, the dog, who was named Gidget, passed away in 2009 from a stroke, according to her owner. She was 15, which is, according to the infallible and highly scientific Pet Calculator, 76 in human years.

21
Today's kids have always been able to communicate with emojis.

secret meanings of emojis
Emojipedia

From emails and texts to social media posts, emojis have become a common part of how we communicate since they launched in 1999. According to the official Unicode list, there are now nearly 2,800 different emojis in use today. And though people of all ages use emojis, some of us remember a time when inserting a smiley face into a text message was a colon and a half parenthesis. But kids born in the 21st century have always had emojis. Try explaining to a teenager how 20th century teens communicated almost solely with words, and they'll look at you like you're nuts.

22
Millie Bobby Brown from Stranger Things has never known a world without Britney Spears.

britney spears one more time music video
YouTube/SME

If you were born in late 1998 or later, you have never known a world without Britney Spears. The pop star's scandalous debut music video for "…Baby One More Time"  premiered in November 1998 when Spears was just 16 years old. That means that one of today's brightest young stars, Millie Bobby Brown of Stranger Things fame who was born in 2000, has never known a world without Spears. And to really jar you, in 2020, she'll be the same age as Spears was in that very music video.

23
Many 18-year-olds have never used a Discman.

When the Discman first came out in 1984, it felt like sweet freedom. You could listen to music anywhere, not just at home or in the car!

You could just pop in your very own "Awesome Summer Mix" that you spent hours making in the days before Napster (let alone, iTunes) and rock out to your favorite tunes. Now, handheld music devices are smaller and lighter than a credit card. And the Discman has become so culturally irrelevant that some young people don't even know what they are anymore.

24
The Motorola Razr is in a museum collection.

20th century facts

Before iPhones became the norm, the only choices in mobile phones were a Nokia or a Motorola. The Motorola Razr—which, in hindsight, sounds like it should be an awesome electric razor—was the most coveted phone on the market in 2004, with its dual color screens and slim flip-phone aesthetic. But as one Reddit user noticed, today, a Motorola Razr is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. That's right: What was very recently cutting-edge tech is now in a museum, amid other musty artifacts from the past.

25
And a cassette tape is kept behind glass at another museum.

words that reveal age
Shutterstock

What is going on? Is our entire past now just a series of museum exhibits? And for more things that will make you feel old, check out the 30 Inventions That Are Way Older Than You Probably Thought.

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