Cabarrus Cheap Seats

Note: For those reading this over RSS or e-mail, you’ll have to go to the site to view the videos.

Since 2002, to help calibrate educators to the offset in age between them and their students to the difference in their ages, Beloit College releases the Mindset List. It’s an eye-opening list to understanding the world that incoming college freshmen know.

Basically, these statements don’t ring true for geezers like you and me; but for young whippersnappers this is reality.

For today’s Friday Five - I’m sharing selections for the Beloit Mindset List that made this 29-year-old feel old.

5. What Berlin Wall? (From the Class of 2011 Mindset List)

A few weeks ago, I shared a video featuring Reagan’s 1987 “Tear Down This Wall” speech. This shorter (1 minute) video includes parts from both Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech and the Reagan speech.

Freshman buying their books were coming into the world in 1989. Geopolitically speaking, that year was the most significant in my lifetime. That year saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the end of Communism in Eastern Europe. That brings us to the next item.

4. The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union. (From the Class of 2010 Mindset List)

While not entirely accurate (the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991 after the failed August Coup), reforms in the Soviet Union allowed for more openness and enterprise. The family of the artist in the video - Regina Spektor - took advantage of the reforms and left Moscow for New York. The video could be talking about a young person reflecting on the political system post-Soviet Russia or present-day America - which is a shame in either case.

This video is much more thoughtful and artistic than the videos that were on MTV when the Spektor family made the trek to the US, and that violates logic because since 1989…

3. MTV has never featured music videos. (From the Class of 2011 Mindset List)

While I don’t know if this is literally true - it appears that way. In the late 80s, MTV started creating more shows like the one featured in the preceding video. So, what makes me feel so old about the fact? Well, in 1989 I closely resembled the subjects of the video.

Incidentally, the Thibault family - like the Spektor family - made the trek from a cold, bleak land dominated by Bolshevik political rhetoric where we’d been exiled. The difference: we were not escaping Moscow; but Toledo, Ohio. A Charlotte-area related one is next.

2. Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker have never preached on television. (From the Class of 2009 Mindset List)

Wow, compare the apology in the video to this response to the exact same situation - only present-day.

It seems it only takes 20 years for true contrition to go out of style.

1. A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’.. (From the Class of 2010 Mindset List)

Well, maybe it took less than 20 years for the value of true contrition to diminish.

Normally, I’d tell y’all I’d see you today (Monday - I’m woefully behind); but because of some things at work and home - I’ll be out for the next week or so.

I’ll see y’all Monday, September 3.