Kids these days

I was helping out with a group of eight graders who came out to the lab to learn about microbes today. One of our faculty members gave a "short" (the quotes indicate that it was only short by PhD standards. He actually ran over his allotted time by more than 15 minutes.) talk at the beginning. One of his slides was a time line of the big exciting events in microbial ecology. It started with Leeuwenhoek's microscope in the 1600s and ended with the first real look at replicated DNA by PCR in 1990. I was sitting there reflecting on how cool it is that such a big thing happened in my lifetime and how we take it for granted that we can do these things but that I was born into a world with no PCR when it occurred to me that these kids WERE NOT BORN YET IN 1990! And it completely BLEW MY MIND! How could anybody be born in 1994? It was like yesterday!

Later, when we were trying to teach them proper pipette technique, we kept telling them how much better they were doing than the cast of CSI. After many blank stares, I asked, "Do you guys watch CSI? Or is it an old people show?" They confirmed that it is indeed an old people show. An old people show that I've been watching for nine years. Sigh...