Why I'm Getting Old

A few weeks back, I was teaching food vocabulary in Spanish. Fruits, vegetables, all of that. One of the vocabulary words was rábano, otherwise known as a radish. I was trying to be funny and made a Fraggle Rock reference. You know, those little things that lived in caves and sang "Dance your cares away (clap, clap) worries for another day, let the music play (clap, clap), down at Fraggle Rock!" Anyway, the fraggles ate radishes. I loved that show when I was little.

My students stared back at me blankly. They had no idea what fraggles were. It was before their time! I could understand if my middle schoolers didn't get it. But these were college-aged kids. I'm not that much older than them, c'mon. But then I thought about it. Most of my students now are between the ages of 18-22. So, I'm at least 5 years older than the oldest. But this is 1st year Spanish and most of them are freshmen, so I'm about 8 or 9 years older than the majority. That's a generation gap. Yikes.