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Bang a gong

This past Wednesday I shared dessert with my randomly assigned peer group at the home of a professor. The idea is for a small group of first-, second-, and third-year students to gather and share experiences about seminary life. The professor serves more as facilitator than adviser. I don't remember how it came into the conversation, but at some point I referenced the Gong Show and suggested that it was a forerunner of American Idol. I thought it was an astute observation, but the reaction of more than one student was, "What's the Gong Show?" Are you kidding me? Chuck Barris? Jamie Farr? The Unknown Comic? Her words rang in my ears like the clanging of a gong proclaiming the generation gap.

Comments

  1. PeterNovember 12, 2010 at 5:34 AM

    I'm not teaching as much, but when I do, I have to be careful about what movie references I make. I mean, who hasn't seen "the Truman Show" by now? Don't they show "Schindler's List" in schools?

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  2. JohnNovember 15, 2010 at 5:08 AM

    "The Truman Show?" Most adults haven't seen that movie! And "Schindler's List?" That's from the early 90s. Last week is ancient history to a lot of youth group kids.

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  3. PeterNovember 18, 2010 at 7:17 AM

    Funny you should mention "last week." I haven't quite tracked down the development of the phrase "haven't seen him in a minute", but I've heard it several times (mostly from people who haven't ticked off their second decade yet.)

    At first, I thought it meant that they had seen them recently, but not now, but it actually means that it's been quite a long time since they've seen that person. Given their exposure to instant gratification (twitter, smartphones, etc) I can only gather that "a minute" feels roughly as long as "forever" does to us.

    Trying to explain things on a geological or astrophysical scale is nigh impossible...

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