Then, it hit me: For someone my age and older, and even a tad bit younger, Shuster and Siegel might have been before our time, but they were still alive by the time I reached adulthood. Both men were a decade older than my grandparents, but they still weren't thought of by me as strictly being historical figures. 

For those young adults of today, however, the Superman creators might be thought of as just that, historical figures, in the way that I think of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Bram Stoker, or J. M. Barrie. It's a more detached view for them, I'm sure, as Siegel and Shuster were gone many years before a twenty-something (or younger) was even born.

I also think of how a similar thing exists with World War II. At my age, my grandparents generation were the ones fighting that war. So, I have a more tangible connection there, too. But for a youngster today, there is as much time passed since World War II and today as there was between the Civil War and WWII, and between The Revolutionary War and the Civil War! EEP!

It's almost unsettling to put things in such perspective, as it makes me feel old. LOL!

Seeing Jaws on TCM felt a bit jarring a few years back, as I think of it as a 'modern' film. The film is the same age as me, so quite the personal yardstick. When I was growing up, the equivalently-aged film would have been something like the Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind.

Similarly, the end of Vietnam is now further back than the end of WWII was when I was a child.

And then there is Star Wars. When the Special Editions came out, I had just finished university. We were all big Star Wars fans in my student house and the trailer came out before we graduated. We were all buzzed for this redux version of the venerable 20-year-old classic. Well, fast forward to 2025 and the Special Edition is now close to 30 years old!