Every year, the kind people at Beloit College remind us boomer faculty that it’s time to update our classroom examples. When I first taught intro psychology, I could use John F. Kennedy’s assassination as my example of “flashbulb memories.” Then it was the Challenger explosion, then 9/11….
Anyway, you can see the whole list at Beloit, but here is their top 10:
- The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
- They have known only two presidents.
- For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
- Manuel Noriega has always been in jail in the U.S.
- They have grown up getting lost in “big boxes.”
- There has always been only one Germany.
- They have never heard anyone actually “ring it up” on a cash register.
- They are wireless, yet always connected.
- A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’.
- Thanks to pervasive headphones in the back seat, parents have always been able to speak freely in the front.
