To be honest, other than my aches and pains I get a lot more often now than before, I don’t really feel like I’m in my late 30’s.  Mostly since my maturity level is about the same as when I was 22 years old.  When I hang around with my friends, or start joking around, my maturity level drops to near 15 years old.  One thing keeps reminding me that I am at the age that I used to consider “old” when I was in high school:  My 11-year-old daughter.

She isn’t doing it intentionally, but it’s really hard not to notice when she asks “Dad, you were alive in the 20th century, how did they [fill in the blank]?”  Seriously, she recognizes that I was alive in the 1900’s, which to me, sounds like I was born before electricity.

A few nights ago, my wife was watching a documentary on one of the On Demand channels we have.  The show was about the awesome music group, Genesis.  If you don’t know who they are, you will probably learn a lot about the “20th century” from my blog, but also, here is a video to help you catch up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIBMpHl-1WU

Where am I going with this?  During the documentary, the narrator talks about the launch of MTV.  My daughter happened to be watching and she says “Wow, they had MTV back then?” I just had to take a moment to myself and process the question.  Sure, she’s only 11.  She thinks everything was invented yesterday.  But then I realized… she has NO IDEA what MTV was.  Today its a channel full of pregnant teenager shows and – okay – I don’t know what is on MTV anymore, I can’t stand watching it.  I do, however, know for a fact that it sure isn’t the 24/7 Music Video Channel.

I remember watching MTV all the time.  I remember watching all day waiting for “Walk Like an Egyptian” to play.  Remember that?  Oh, good times.

MTV had hosts called VJ’s.  Video Jockeys.  How awesome was that?  They also had countdown shows, MTV News, and MTV Spring Break, which all revolved around MUSIC.  As a young MTV viewer you got to know your VJ’s :  Kurt Loder, Martha Quinn, Tabitha Soren, Downtown Julie Brown, and many others.

A lot of the stars we know today were on MTV back in their early years.  Jon Stewart, Colin Quinn, Pauly Shore, and Carlson Daly to name a few.  Of course there were my personal favorites: Jenny McCarthy and Daisy Fuentes, for obvious reasons.

All that is gone now.  I now have access to everything they have ever had on that channel, but it’s not the same.  I hate to say things come to easy to us now, but sometimes I think they do.  There’s no wait.  No anticipation.  No impatience.  No thrill.

Now I find myself looking at my daughter, realizing she will never understand what it was like not being able to watch a music video with a simple search on YouTube.  She believes that MTV has nothing to do with music. She’s right.  It doesn’t have anything to do with music anymore.  She doesn’t even understand why it’s called M TV!  She probably just thinks it’s 3 random letters they decided to put on the channel.

So, feeling as old as my chronological age, I sigh and tell her.  “Yes they did.  It played music videos.  That’s what the “M” stands for in MTV.  Music Television.”

“Oh.”  She replies, turning back to the TV to watch the show.  No big deal to her.  Just another interesting fact in her young world.

At least she likes Genesis.  That’s daddy’s girl.