LogFAQs > #971969717

rjsilverthorn posted...

The comic doesn't really mark the year that you become old, it marks the year that the majority of the US population would be too young to remember a specific event.

Phrased differently, it marks the year in which anyone who remembers those things will be older than the majority of the US population. There's an argument to be made that that qualifies as "old," though I would personally agree with you that it isn't quite the same thing, since "able to remember X" suggests an age quite a bit older than "was alive for X," especially when dealing with relatively complex political issues that children might not be fully aware of (I remember Diana's death, for example, but not Clinton's impeachment, though as a non-American that distorts my perspective a bit).