What does it mean when someone calls you old school?
Old school means something close to old-fashioned, but it’s a term with more pride behind it. If someone says, “I’m old school,” they’re saying they do it like it used to be done, which they believe was a better way. In mob movies, the old school usually thinks they’re better than the younger criminals.
What does being old fashioned mean?
The definition of old fashioned is someone or something that is behind the times, not up to date and often no longer considered relevant. An example of an old fashioned person is one who doesn’t use any technology or cell phones. An example of old fashioned is a rotary phone.
What are old school values?
Of course, there are some good “old school” values such as: Respect for self, family, friends, community, and others, in everything from good manners towards strangers all the way through to honesty. And it should apply to relationships with people of all races and religions, not just our own.
As you could probably guess by the sheer fact that I’m running an internet blog, I have absolutely no problem embracing some technologies. A lot of the technological advances that we have made in the last century have been for the better, and I absolutely love having a car, basic medicine, and even the convenience of the internet.
However, there are some things that I think will always be better when done the old fashioned way.
1. Send snail-mail cards and letters
2. Read real books
3. Hang wall calendars
4. Have an old-fashioned photo album
5. Keep a handwritten journal
6. Keep paper lists
7. Cook-This is big during the pandemic. Food should not come out of a box and should require more than water and a couple of eggs to be completed. Cooking the old-fashioned way is not only less money but also more healthy for you.
8. Play board games. No matter how many online versions of chess or checkers there are, there is a dynamic that is always missing when compared to sitting down with friends and family to play a solid board game. Not only are there more options for conversation, but it’s just more fun. And now that my sons are grown up, I miss the weekly family game night.
So, you might be saying, where is all of this coming from?
There is a Goodwill store and donation center roughly two miles north of me. I discovered it a while back as I was out for my daily walk but did not give it a thought until somebody suggested that it might be worth checking out. I was at the beginning stages of a divorce and my soon to be ex-wife decided that she would provide to me three suits, none of which matched, four pairs of shoes, no belts, no ties, and well, I just pounded the space bar as I thought about life with her.
I walked in and was stunned at what I saw. Sports jackets, pants, shirts, shoes for both men and women. I purchased a few items that day (a sports jacket that looked brand new and was exactly my size along with two pairs of jeans) for under ten dollars!
Since that day I have returned to the store several times. I make it my business to visit on Wednesdays. Senior Citizens receive a 25% discount and I happily pull out my driver’s license to receive it. Baby boomers are now senior citizens.
I can’t help thinking that when I was five years old, my mother would drop me off with my grandfather on Friday mornings so she could have her hair done. He was in his early fifty’s, younger than I am now, and he seemed old.
Walking through the store can feel like you are in a time machine. Photo albums (who uses those anymore?), stereos with turntables and cassette players, clock radios, and analog watches.
But for me, it was the Adidas Superstars and Puma Clyde’s both size 9 that did it for me. I love that everything old is new again and I know these two pairs weren’t technically manufactured in the 1970s, but they took me back.
In the movie “Live Free or Die Hard” (yes, I still watch the original during the holidays as if it’s the first time I saw it) the bad guy tells John McClain he is a “Timex watch in a digital world.” But so what? I now embrace it when I am called old school.
On a Saturday morning in the fall of 1972, my older brother convinced our dad to drive us to Wolfs Sports Shop in Rockville Center to buy us sneakers. I was eleven and had graduated from PF Flyers to Converse All Star Chuck Taylors; neither of which cost more than $8.00.
Imagine my surprise when my brother convinced him that we “needed” Adidas Superstars.
“Total support,” he said. “So much better for the foot.”
Dad saw them and asked if they were sneakers or shoes, but he liked them until we stood at the checkout line.
To this day I am not sure when the man said, “that’ll be $41.38,” if my father was angry or aware that the world was changing in front of his eyes as he replaced his twenty-dollar bill with his American Express card and chillingly stared at my brother for what felt like hours.
My father looked at me in the parking lot. “Show them to your mother. Do not say a word about the price, especially you.”
Nobody, I mean NOBODY, I know, owned these things. Wings for your feet. The triple striped Superstar sneaker, with its scalloped “shell toe” design, began to make tracks across the basketball courts of America. Players favored the durable leather and rubber construction of the shoe, a sharp contrast to the flimsy canvas make of the majority of sneakers heard squeaking across the court. By the mid-1970s, nearly three-quarters of all NBA players were wearing them along with me. The nerdiest kid in school was about to either become the coolest kid or punched in the face for owning the gold standard of the sports world.
Fortunately for me it was the former!
“Oohs and ah’s were followed by, “Those are so cool. Where’d you get ’em? I gotta get my mother to get me a pair. Are they really expensive?”
At that point, everything changed. Hair was longer. The music was louder. Ballplayers looked cooler. Adidas was cool until Joe Namath wore cool white Puma and Walt Frazier traded in his Converse for a version of Puma’s aptly named Clyde, his alter ego.
To this day, I like Classic Rock, long hair, and a Rado watch my dad bought in 1970. I embrace new technology and listen to the younger generation’s language.
The world is a different place today than it was back in the ’60s and ’70s. Don’t get me wrong, there is lots of cool stuff today and I wonder if my folks did what I do and think back to that time and wonder if I was better then than now.
Many of us are convinced that while everyone else is aging, that person we see in the mirror every morning is magically aging at a somehow slower pace. The age confusion can start early.
Call it what you will, but this gray-haired group of boomers and beyond — myself included — is having a hard time accepting the realities of aging. Yes, we are mortal, but we’re not quite believing it. The great irony, say experts on aging, is that this flirtation with a slightly different reality from our aging peers may, in fact, be a healthy thing.
The fact we’re generally living longer than we used to also plays a role. As our life spans get longer, so does our view of old age. How we view ourselves changes constantly as we age.
Remember before when I spoke about my grandfather? Well, he made it to 80. My grandmother made it to 85 and I do not ever remember seeing her wear a pair of sneakers or rollerblades.
The most familiar smell from her kitchen was that of the fried chicken crackling on the front burner every Friday evening. I can’t remember even once seeing her exercise. Action, in her world, was a game of cards or bending down whenever I yelled to her that that the picture on the TV in the den was crooked.
So, I’m old school. I still buy birthday cards. I don’t know, it shows an effort. But, I guess, a shoutout on Facebook, who reminded me as I was walking to the bathroom, that it’s Chris’s birthday and Tom’s work anniversary, gets me just as much credit.
A side note. I mailed a birthday card to a friend who no longer spends time at his residence, since moving in with his girlfriend. He received my card three weeks later when he stopped by his mailbox to see if he had any overdue bills. “Just send me a text next year. Snailmail is disappearing, don’t you think?”
At 59, I’ve given up on most fried foods. I stopped smoking, cigarettes were making me sick, and pot was making me paranoid. I don’t sit around much playing cards or watching TV. And all the time I spent walking on the beach I view it as an invisible shield that protects me from looking into the mirror and seeing an old man staring back.
Unfortunately, I still see me. But when I look down, the Adidas Superstars are looking pretty cool.