Teachers Are Sharing The Moment A Student Made Them Feel Old As Heck, And I Feel For Them

Buzz Feed

20-04-2025

Teachers already have to put up with a lot: angry parents, unruly kids, and budget cuts, to name a few. So when their students accidentally make them feel ancient with an offhanded comment, it has to feel like a real gut punch.
So, we asked the teachers out there in the BuzzFeed Community about the moment a student made them think, Oh no, I'm old! And just as a warning, their stories might make YOU feel old, too.
TBS
1.
"I teach second grade, and I had to explain what 'rerun' means. They could not comprehend what I was saying. I even said, 'You can DVR a show,' and they didn't know what a DVR was. This was about four years ago. I felt so old, and I'm in my early 30s!"
—anonymous
2.
"I was reading a book to my kindergartners, and one of them asked why some of the pictures were black and white and not in color. I explained that a long, long time ago, they didn't have color photographs…only black and white. She said, 'Oh, like in the '90s?'"
—anonymous
3.
"This was 25 years ago; I was teaching a university popular fiction class. Mind you, I wasn't quite 30 yet myself. A first-year uni student asked me, 'Where can I find classic movies from the '80s?' I felt a hole drop out from under me back then. That was it, the moment when I was officially OLD."
—anonymous, age 53
4.
"I teach freshmen in high school. I started to feel old when I got my first class of freshmen who were born AFTER 9/11. Then I realized how people felt when they talked about the assassination of JFK or the landing on the moon, and I would say I was not born. Ouch!"
—anonymous, 51, Florida
5.
"A few years ago, there was a school spirit day themed to the 2000s (the week's theme was 'through the decades'). Just the day theme alone made me feel ancient, but then a girl showed up to my class wearing jeans under a spaghetti strap dress over a white tee, with a skinny scarf accent. I literally laughed so hard I was bent over, and struggled to tell her how accurate her outfit was.
When I recovered, I told her, 'I don't care what you guys bring back, as long as it's not low-rise jeans.' She looked at me, confused, and said, 'Oh, I think they're cute!' Cue a rant from me about how low-rise jeans are TERRIBLE unless you have the skinniest stick figure, and even then you're always worried your whole butt is falling out, you have to pull them up every time you sit, every time you stand, every time you move. 'LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKES!' I shouted, but apparently they didn't."
—anonymous, 31, California
7.
"I'm a Snoopy fanatic and collector, and because of that, I'm a fan of jazz. I'd always play jazz music for my class. One day, the radio was on, and the kids wanted to know what we were listening to. When I explained it was jazz, they said it was boring and sounded like 'old people's music.' Then they pointed out I was older than their mothers, so I would be their grandma. I just about died and switched the station."
—anonymous
8.
"They made fun of my slip-on Sketchers."
—anonymous
9.
"I'm a music teacher, and I was playing a game with my 3rd graders where they had to guess the song AND the artist. I played a One Direction song (can't remember which one), and they were all so confused. I gave them a hint and said, 'Guys, this group is how Harry Styles got famous,' and they all went, 'Huh???' I wanted to curl into a ball."
—anonymous, 25, Ohio
10.
"I had a student suddenly break out singing, 'ain't no lie, baby bye bye bye.' I asked him how he knew that song. He said, 'It's from Deadpool [& Wolverine]. How do YOU know that song!?' I laughed and said that I saw NSYNC in concert when I was his age. He looked me dead in the eyes and said, 'Who's NSYNC?'"
—anonymous, 38, Delaware
11.
"I ran into one of my old students in a grocery store one day. I taught him when he was nine, and he was now 25. I asked how he was doing and chatted with him. He asked me, 'You're still teaching?' I was only 50 years old. What the heck?"
—anonymous
12.
"I was sharing a story about my mom in class one day, and a student looked me straight in the eye and said, 'Your mother is still alive?'"
—anonymous
13.
"Middle school teacher here. A computer science prep book had an instructional DVD. A student said, 'That is so vintage. I love that!' And when I started talking about how we would burn CDs, I got the most confused looks... worse than when I was teaching them math lol."
—anonymous, 34
14.
"I teach sixth-grade Social Studies in a middle school. My students have had some funny jokes about how old they think I am, but here are some of the best ones:
We were talking about the Civil War, and I had them design outfits that people would wear during that period. Someone asked if I could help with hers because 'I experienced it and would know it better than her.'
Someone asked when we would learn about dinosaurs. I said never because that's a science topic. He then let out a long sigh. When I asked why, he said, 'I wanted to see the pictures that you took when you saw them!'
Another student asked if school buses existed 'back in the olden days.' It made me feel like I was born in the Middle Ages!"
—anonymous
15.
"I was teaching English in Korea in 2009. The textbook had pictures of household items that students had to label from a word bank. A third-grader — so about 8 or 9 years old — said, 'Teacher, what is VCR?' I was 23 at the time, but that question made me feel like a fossil."
—anonymous, 39, California
16.
"I was listening to the radio in between classes. An Elton John song came on. I said, 'Hey, Elton John,' to which one of my kids asked, 'Who??'"
—anonymous, 25, California
NBC
17.
"My students had no idea Beyoncé was in Destiny's Child before her solo career."
—anonymous
18.
"A word problem mentioned an unlisted number, and I had to stop and explain all about phone books and unlisted numbers to my students. They were completely flabbergasted that you just had everyone's info in a book sitting on your coffee table."
—anonymous, 40, Virginia
19.
"One of my students said that they were born in 2016. I was confused for half a second, thinking they would be a baby, and I felt so old when I realized, 'Right, that makes sense for a nine-year-old.'"
—anonymous, Texas
20.
"I had a child in class ask, 'Who's Elvis?'"
—anonymous, 39, Georgia
21.
"When I started teaching in the '90s, I talked about buying 45s. My students thought I was talking about guns."
—anonymous
22.
"I taught high school juniors and seniors. One day, partway through the school year, a student randomly said that his mom said she dated me in high school."
—anonymous
23.
"A few years ago I was teaching a group of 3rd years (around 15 years old). The topic was consumer studies, and I used the phrase 'keeping up with the Joneses' to explain how people often buy things they don't need just to look more affluent to others. I noticed the class was kinda looking at me strangely, and there was some whispering and giggling going on, so I asked what was up. One of the students replied, 'Ms, it's keeping up with the Kardashians.' They had never heard the keeping up with the Joneses reference before."
—anonymous, Ireland
24.
"I am a first-grade teacher, and on occasion over the years, my young students would mistakenly call me 'Mommy' — now I am referred to as 'Grandma.'"
—anonymous
25.
"It's happened a few times. Students tell me I had their siblings, and I can't even remember the year they graduated. Or the time when no one was responding to a question, and I started saying, 'Bueller..?' And they looked at me like I had an arm growing out of my head."
—anonymous, 40, New Jersey
Paramount
26.
"During free reading time, this kid was looking through a book about planes. There was a picture of one of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers on 9/11. He asked me what was happening in the picture. I did the math and realized that he hadn't even been born when 9/11 occurred."
— vivaluna0000