I’ll admit it: Young culture passing me by

One day many years ago, my father – who was then in his 50s – asked me: “Who are Paul Revere and the Raiders?” I couldn’t believe it. How could he not know? I swore that day I would never grow up to be an adult who didn’t keep up with the popular bands.

In Friday’s 7 entertainment section, music writer Isamu Jordan previewed the hot acts coming to Spokane in October. Their names: Built to Spill, Swords, People Under the Stairs, Hangar 18, The Decemberists, Lyrics Born.

I didn’t recognize one name. Culture, popular and otherwise, is passing me by, perhaps passing by my entire 50-something generation. My mother, who is almost 85, tells me that every generation’s women and men experience this as they age.

They become more and more invisible as their celebrities, music, books and activities grow obsolete, usurped by the celebrities, music, books and activities of the younger generations.

So I was prepared for it. Just not this soon. But behold some irrefutable evidence.

The Deep Throat Evidence: Deep Throat was finally identified this summer. He was former FBI agent W. Mark Felt. The source for Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the Deep Throat mystique inspired my generation of reporters.

The revelation garnered excitement among my peers, but much ho-humness among the younger set.

I once said that at the Pearly Gates of heaven I’ll ask two questions: “Where is Jimmy Hoffa buried?” and “Who was Deep Throat?” It didn’t feel that heavenly to find out one of these answers while still on Earth. And Bernstein, 61, looked so old when interviewed on TV.

Geena Davis, the actress who plays the first woman president in “Commander in Chief,” is 49 and looks a lot better than Bernstein. Her show is doing well in the ratings, but Philadelphia Inquirer media writer Beth Gillin reported that the network bigwigs are worried because the show “appeals mostly to older women.”

When I read the line, I pictured knitting grandmas in rocking chairs. Then I realized the network types probably mean women in their 50s. Women like me.

The Freak Dancing Evidence: Several Inland Northwest high schools are canceling mixers because the adult chaperones are tired of breaking up couples who freak dance. In these dances, the teens allegedly simulate sex.

The news sent me dancing down memory lane to Gonzaga Prep mixers in the early ‘70s when the chaperones broke up the boys who dared to do the gator, a dance in which boys simulated the sex act with the floor.

Some of these gatoring bad boys are now business leaders here, fathers of teens, who might worry about back trouble were they to attempt to do the gator now.

The freak dancing news didn’t freak me out one bit. High school is the closest we ever come to understanding what it must have been like when everyone belonged to tribes. Dirty dancing is part of the teen tribal ritual. The gator, my generation’s nasty tribal dance, is now just a memory. A fond one, actually.

The Crazy Lady Clothes Evidence: My friends and I rode our bikes through childhood neighborhoods in the ‘60s and ‘70s and laughed at the clothes some women wore while working in their yards. Those pink stretch pants, red overblouses, straw hats and worn-out clogs. We swore to always stay fashion forward.

Most mornings, my husband and I walk through our neighborhood, and I often brainstorm my columns on these walks. While ruminating on this column, I wore worn hiking boots, a red flannel cap with earflaps, white thermal underwear, a pink “Flashdance”-style sweat shirt from the ‘80s underneath a black down jacket, with shoulder pads, also from the ‘80s.

The jacket once belonged to my father, who went to his grave never knowing who Paul Revere and the Raiders were, and feeling none the worse for it.