"We had a Tandy from Radio Shack," Lanzot says. "You had to subscribe to the magazine and in the magazine they sent you code, and if you ran the code it would create pictures that would move. You'd leave the pictures on your screen all day long."

Seniors say they are startled to think that the students sitting next to them in lecture are so much younger.

"It is weird seeing people who look my sister's age," says Lanson, whose sister is a first-year in college. "There was a Dins show recently and a guy stood up and said, 'I was born in 1980.' He was roundly booed."

Talking to someone who doesn't share childhood memories can make even a college student feel old. But seniors, take heart from administrators: it's possible to grow older gracefully. Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans says she didn't join in most of the signature moments of the '80s childhood.

"No to the films, except 'Gremlins' and 'Revenge of the Nerds,'" Nathans said in an e-mail message. "No to Cabbage Patch Kids, no to Atari but yes to TI-99 (which was the slightly more sophisticated version of Atari; you could program it, but it also had great games)."

Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 is more philosophical. Our own cultural moments are shorter than we think, he says.

"Once you get past your own cultural generation, being out of touch by one generation or three doesn't matter much," Lewis said via e-mail. "It only matters when you get into a group with two different generations of students and suddenly realize that not only do you not get their jokes--that you are used to; they don't get each other's jokes, either."