Troy Donahue

I think it was Halloween night last year - or maybe the year before - I was walking a block to a local convenience store and encountered a rambunctious group of early-twenty-somethings apparently on their way to a costume party. One of the girls, wearing a blond wig and dressed in a long lavender shirt and dark tights, exuberantly exclaimed in my direction, "Look at me, I'm Sandra Dee!" I was a bit taken by surprise, and my blank stare led to her prompting, "Y'know: Grease. The song?"

It had been decades since I'd seen either the film or the show, and it took a few seconds to register. "Oh, right, right...I didn't make the connection. I was thinking of the real Sandra Dee. I don't remember her ever dressing like that."

It was now her turn to stare blankly: "The what?"

"Sandra Dee, the actress," I explained. The girl was still mystified. "She was a real person: a perky young blond popular in movies of the late-'50s and early-'60s," I continued, "who played wholesome, innocent girls-next-door."

After a second or two, she responded, "Oh," with a sort of why-are-you-telling-me-this inflection. "Never heard of her. I only know the song."

The irony was head-spinning: a girl 40-odd years younger than I, referencing a song written 20 years before she was born - that she remembered better than I - that itself referenced an actress of whom she'd never heard.

Generation gaps get pretty complicated when people a third your age can stump you with cultural references from your youth, yet be unaware of their origins.