The milestones of my boys – reaching 2 years and 6 months respectively, recently – has of course, as these things go, turned my mind to my own father. He passed away when I was in my late teens, as I’ve written before, both here and at another blog. What I’ve been realising lately though, is that he belongs to a different era now. His time has passed and the social markers make the gap more distinct.
Dad died in 1998, when I was 16. He was only 35, having been just 19 when I was born. In theory, we should be growing old together and swapping notes on similar sorts of things. But we aren’t. And there are a lot of things that have happened since he died. I’ve put together this little list in the past half an hour, just off the top of my head. Makes me realise how long ago it actually was, that we said goodbye to him. When Dad died in March 1998:
- Adelaide had only won their first premiership
- Essendon, Brisbane and Geelong had not started their AFL dynasties
- John Howard had only won 1 election
- Jeff Kennett was still Premier of Victoria, and John Brumby was most recently an election loser
- Bill Clinton was US President
- The World Trade Center towers were the pride of America
- Discmans were what the cool kids had
- Trains had some empty standing room in peak hour
- Hair product was not yet a man’s grooming essential
- The Australian cricket team were about to shit all over the rest of the world for a good five years
- Mobile phones were still a novelty.
And that’s just off the top of my head!
It really has been a long time since my father had a pulse, and the social markers become more pronounced, and more numerate, with each passing year.
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