“You’re such an old man,” my wife often chides me when I’m asking what’s wrong with the world today.

I’m 29, but always interested in how everything fits together and what separates us from each other as well.

Last week the Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014 was released. Each August since 1998, the list “provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.”

I came from a small town in Deep South Alabama. We were behind the times in many ways in Bay Minette. So when we went to college, my roommate Booker and I tried to make sure we had everything we needed.

We had no cell phones, but we had a cordless landline. We also had a microwave with a dial for a timer, the mini fridge, a toaster, a radio with tape and CD players and two alarm clocks. That and the clothes we brought were all we had, but we still had way more than many guys on our floor, like a drum set and an electric guitar with huge speakers.

Our buddy Jeff had a video game system and we’d often spend many hours playing NFL Blitz on the first Play Station console. We’d drive the mile-and-a-half to his apartment to play it. You can get games like Blitz on cell phones now.

Our worldview was mainly based on what we’d been told by our parents, the Baby Boomers.

We grew up with GI Joe—the cartoon of course—which spun off the 3.5-inch action figures. We blew them up with firecrackers. The Ninja Turtles were big before we were too old to play with toys. Girls fell in love with New Kids on the Block. Bart was nine years old when the Simpsons debuted, and so was I. Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and the rest of The Dream Team went to the Olympics before I was old enough to shave.

So what worldview do college freshmen bring in 2010? A few things stood out to me when I read Beloit’s list of the class of 2014:

“The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm,” Beliot’s site claims.

When my cousin Beth bought her first car—a new Korean-made 1999 Kia—she had to have the brakes replaced at only 3,000 miles. Those cars have come a long way in 11 years and are now sold on TV and radio alongside Fords, Chevys and Toyotas.

“Since ‘digital’ has always been in the cultural DNA, they’ve never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch.”

I have rarely written in cursive since being taught it in the third grade because each of my teachers deemed that my handwriting was worse in cursive than my normal scrawl.

Only a childhood friend of mine, Seth Barnes, had worse cursive by the time we graduated high school. My own handwriting has only gotten worse over the years, and I have wondered if Seth’s ever got better.

I also check my cell phone for the time, and have since I first owned one in the spring of 2001.

“They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.” I am probably the last holdout on corded phones.

Last fall I finally retired the same corded rotary phone that rang loudly at my mother’s house for over 20 years. And I only did that because the fiber optic phone line that brings information into our home won’t drive such old technology.

“Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.” Before The Wall fell and Gorbechev was ousted, we always played war under the guise that the Russians were the enemy and China was just some place with a billion people who wouldn’t let you have more than one boy.

Would a freshman even know what The Wall was or who Gorbechev is?

“John McEnroe has never played professional tennis” and “Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.”

I haven’t yet darkened the door to 30, but even I remember Mac’s tirades being highlighted on the nightly news and when Eastwood started working behind the camera.

“Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.” And they don’t come with disk drives anymore, so my children won’t get to read my old college papers.

“Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.” I was 13 when Kurt Cobain died. The band I was in throughout high school cut our musical teeth learning his songs.

“J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone.” I was convinced in my youth that when Dallas was on, no one in my hometown could be pulled away from the television for longer than a commercial break.

“They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.” I met him as a Ninja Turtle in the third grade.

“The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.” The summer and fall of 1993 can’t be recalled without his first album being played in the background.

I might have witnessed some things a college freshman hasn’t. But if I need help with my Blackberry or need to know who it is that’s playing on the radio, I’m turning to the first freshman I can find.