My daughter asked me what it meant when my wife told her that she sounded "like a broken record." I realized that technology was leaping way ahead of our cliches, rendering many of them obsolete to entire generations.
I explained to her that for years, people listened to music was on vinyl records, and that the music was picked up with a phonographic needle. A scratch on the album would cause the needle to skip and a piece of the song to repeat over and over and over again, much like her constant nagging for an iPhone.
"What a stupid way to listen to music," she said. "A needle?"
So now I'm wondering what are some other common, cliche phrases that are likely to make no sense at all to anyone born after 1990?
(I guess referring to television as "the tube" makes no sense anymore. Same for "dialing a number.")
He was in like Flynn. Who’s “Flynn”?
The cops pulled a Mutt and Jeff routine on me. Who’s “Mutt and Jeff”?
Ah, heck, these might even be obsolete to MY generation.
Dropping a dime (to make a phone call).
Hard to even find a pay phone these days and it’s been many moons since they conected for a dime.
Clockwise and counter-clockwise.
He’s wound tighter than a wristwatch.
“Taping” to mean recording – music, TV.
I still say “It was an E-ticket ride” even though Disney has not had E-tickets for years.\\VG
My mother used to say that “this is as hard as pulling teeth” because the dentists used to pull teeth out regularly when she was growing up.
Another was, “it’s as slow as molasses in January” because people used to buy jugs of molasses and pour it out, I think, to sweeten tea or coffee.
Growing up, we used to say “that’s really neat” meaning something was cool, but the word “neat” is out, I think.
Then, I finally leaned what a “floppy disk” was and a “3 inch floppy disk” and then they became obsolete! And now DVD’s, which replaced floppies, are on their way out.
But one thing has not changed and that’s “Star Trek.” I’m cooler than the kids growing up since 1990 because I know more about Star Trek than they do. Of course, they know more than me about everything else, but everything else isn’t as cool as Star Trek!
I am happy to say that my children all get the broken-record expression, because we have an extensive LP collection. They think it’s neat.
You mentioned dialing a phone, curse you, but what about the expression “don’t touch that dial”?
Also ice box. I grew up with a refrigerator, but always followed my parents’ lead and call it an icebox. Granted they are of an age when they had honest-to-God iceman cometh iceboxes.
Also do not fold spindle or mutilate. We used punch cards when signing up for courses in the 1980s. Now it can be done from a cell phone.
My mother, referring to your mother, often said, “I think she was vaccinated with a phonograph needle.”
I used that expression recently, and no one knew (a) what it meant, or (b) the word “phonograph”