Happy Birthday

Yesterday was my sister's 40th birthday.  There was a party this weekend.

As I am still a few years shy of my 40th, I had a little fun putting together a toast for my sister.  (I wonder if I'll find it quite so entertaining when I'm sneaking up on the four decade mark myself.) 

Nonetheless, I thought I'd share my toast with you all -- because, well, as fun as good-naturedly mocking one's sister is, doing it in front of a wider audience is even more fun.  And so:

Wow.  Forty.  Do you know how old that is?  Let me put it this way.  See this issue of Tiger Beat?  Every single person featured in this magazine was born after you graduated High School.  That’s how old you are.

 

Remember when you read Tiger Beat?  David Cassidy is 54.  Think about that

 

When you were born, Lord of the Rings was just a trilogy of books.  You were born before the Star Wars trilogy.  You were born before the Godfather trilogy.  Hell, you were born before Puzo even wrote “The Godfather

 

You were born before EuroDisney, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disney World

 

In your lifetime, the world saw the first images of war televised, the moon landing, and the first 8-track tape player

 

You’ve been around longer than HDTV, flat screen TVs, cable TV, satellite TV, pay-per-view, DVD-players and VCRs

 

You’ve been around longer than 60 Minutes.  You’ve been around longer than PBS

 

 

When you were born, there was no Atkins Diet.  There was no Diet 7-Up.  There were no little blue bags of sugar substitute.  There was no sugarless gum.

 

You were around before the independence of:  Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Estonia, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Slovenia, Croatia, Lithuania, Belarus, Brunei, East Timor, Suriname,Angola, Bahrain, Qatar, Fiji, Swaziland, Botswana and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

 

You were born before Steve Jobs dropped out of college and Stephen Hawking was confined to a wheelchair

 

You were born before anyone ever celebrated Kwanzaa, Earth Day, or Martin Luther King Day.  18-year-olds couldn’t vote.

 

You were born before Roe v. Wade.

 

There was no Sydney Opera House or People magazine.

 

OK, now, at this point, you might be thinking, "Yeah, OK.  But [NZ], you're just a few years younger than [your sister].  You're older than a lot of this stuff, too."  Which is true.  So I've also compiled a short list of things that are older than I am, but still younger than her:

 

Doctor Zhivago

The Graduate

Mary Poppins

The “It’s A Small World” ride

Fiddler on the Roof

Star Trek

The “G,” “PG,” “R,” and “X” rating system

The fax machine

The floppy disk

Cordless phones

Daylight Savings Time

Cool Whip

Gatorade

Spaghetti-O’s

Tang

Unsafe At Any Speed

Affirmative Action

The Canadian flag with the maple leaf

Miranda warnings

The Monkees

and

The first human heart transplant

 

Happy birthday, babe!