A young people's war

I don't think that I'm unique in having a mental age of being about 25-ish. I imagine most people who are over 25 have a mental age of being about 25. I think I'm pretty young and certainly don't feel like time has passed, or is passing, me by. But, occasionally, the young people give you their opinion of your age...

Today I was in a brief about different kinds of imagery that was available for our use in planning and executing missions. It was pretty interesting, some was new information, some I already knew. When we got to one collection platform the briefer said, "Fortunately, they don't usually use the wet camera system - it's too slow and not real-time. You know, wet film that has to be taken out to be developed. I'm sure your parents all had a camera like that when you were a kid."

What?! My parents might have owned one when I was a kid? What does that mean if I owned one? Am I suddenly old?

Then I glanced around the room. All of us LtCol types had hurt expressions on our faces and all of the other soldiers had no expression - they took the briefer's statement as fact, as if they were all thinking, "Wet film. Hmmmm. Isn't that a lot like black and white TV? I've heard of such a thing, but never actually seen it."

I think I'm going to head down to the PX and see if they have any Geritol.

Cheers, Pearl