a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by istara
istara  ·  3843 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A Story I Wrote About Affairs with Married Guys

    This story was written back in the last century around the time of the US invasion of Panama.

This really threw me because I was thinking 1800s and wondering what the hell was with all the modernity and the references to telephones!





lil  ·  3843 days ago  ·  link  ·  

hmmmm, I don't want people going into the story with 1890 in their minds. Alexander Graham Bell filed his patent in 1876, but the car phone took another 100 years. (Intro will be edited.)

istara  ·  3843 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's probably just because I'm so elderly myself - majority of my life lived in the "last century" - that I can't quite think of it as the last century.

lil  ·  3843 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Good point. Kids born after 1990 probably immediately think of the 1900s when they hear the phrase "the last century." I wonder what the cut-off birth year is for the 1800s to be the first thing to come to mind upon hearing that phrase. I'll do some informal interviewing on this question.

istara  ·  3843 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm 1970s, so I reached adulthood long before the Millennium. And of course went through my entire education hearing the phrase "last century" used to refer to the 1800s. But born after 1990 would be very different.