I thought for a moment you meant you'd become both non-student and non-old! (I'm sleepy) -- hey great on non-student. >Humor, like vernacular language itself, is generational Vernacular, certainly, and I'm hopelessly old fogey where that's concerned. Judy Evans, Cardiff ----- Original Message ----- From: carol kirschenbaum To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2007 11:10 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: OLD JOKES Yo! It took just one month to obliterate my dual status--old and a student. Now that I don't have to pretend to share my sense of humor with students, am I free to analyze humor, thereby destroying any sense of it? Yes, I am, declares my inner (and outer) elder. Now we are one. Humor, like vernacular language itself, is generational. Much of it today depends on TV. Actually, that's true for my era, too (anyone here remember riffing on "ooh! ooh!" from "Car 54"?) Thing is, the 20s and 30s of today have no memory of the boomer's jokey stuff. Our jokey memories extend back only to our parents' 40s or so. For a while, I kept up and volleyed back to the 20ish kids in their lingo. Shock and awe. I fit in. But for how long could I keep up the ruse? Ach phooey. Too much energy. Carol