I was perusing the internet Monday morning looking at the news to decide whether or not I wanted to talk about President George Bush’s nomination for the United States Supreme Court.

As I was gathering information, an amazing bit of news crossed my screen.

The headline read, &uot;Man Solves Rubik’s Cube in 11.13 Seconds&uot; and I was completely caught off guard.

Actually I was caught by surprise twice. Once because who knew there were world records for such things and second because I had no idea the cubes were still in existence.

As the story goes, Leyan Lo solved the puzzle in 11.13 seconds, breaking the previous world record of 11.75 seconds. He still wasn’t crowned world champion (insert your own joke here) because the competition combined the times of three attempts.

As I was sharing this information with some of the people here at Roanoke-Chowan Publishing, we started reminiscing about some of the things that those under 25 likely would have no idea about. While we know that 30s certainly isn’t old, there are a lot of things we have seen come and go in our short time here.

Of course, there are several historical events that have shaped life in the 21st century that took place in the latter part of the 1900s.

A few of those we mentioned right away, including the explosion of the &uot;Challenger&uot; space shuttle, the attempted assassination of President Ronald W. Reagan and the falling of the Berlin wall.

Most of us easily recalled where we were the moment we learned about one of the most tragic events in our exploration of space. I’m sure that the fact Christa McAuliffe was onboard made the event even more tragic.

I was standing outside of Julie Little’s World Geography class attempting to impress my would-be high school sweetheart at the time. The news was deafening.

We were shocked beyond belief because the event seemed so surreal. We all thought we were past the dangerous part of space exploration, but we found out in a moment it wasn’t true.

Many of my other memories are of things such as playing eight-track tapes when I was younger and thinking we had &uot;arrived&uot; when we got a dual player that allowed us to play eight-tracks and records.

Atari was the &uot;in&uot; thing when I was young and seemed like the coolest things that would ever be invented. Now, of course, kids would throw it away rather than have to sit through the boring games. (I still like it though.)

I remember rooting for the Baltimore Colts and quarterback Bert Jones. Now the Colts play in Indianapolis and the Baltimore franchise boasts of being Ravens.

In baseball, I thought Reggie Jackson was the best hitter of all time, even though I have always been a fan of the Boston Red Sox and therefore, couldn’t stand the thought of a Yankee holding that high pinnacle.

I actually do remember UHF television which, believe it or not, we watched in my house on our 13-channel floor-model television.

Despite what some may believe, I did attend a few drive-in movies in my life. I agree with my buddy Dave Friedman that they are one of the things that we miss.

I’ll conclude with this list of things many people under 25 may have never heard of. I hope it provides you with a good laugh.

* &uot;Where’s the beef?;&uot;

* full-service gas stations;

* avocado kitchen appliances;

* clothes lines in the back yard;

* telephones you actually have to dial;

* hacky sacks;

* Hell’s angels;

* rockem, sockem robots;

* the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew;

* tie-dyed t-shirts;

* S&H greenstamps;

* safe hitchhiking;

* smoking wherever you want;

* Captain Kangaroo;

* candy cigarettes;

* baseball cards with bubble gum;

* Apple computers;

* Television stations that went off the air at midnight;

* pocket protectors; and

* Mr. T.