I was at my mom’s house yesterday when I noticed that she still has a stack of encyclopedias on her bookshelf.

They are the encyclopedias my grandmother tried to get rid of after concluding that they were too old; at which point, my mother took them, thinking they would be useful for my brothers and sister and me to do our school work with. To recap: They were too old for my grandmother, so my mother took them for her children to learn from.

They are from 1963.

Nearly every bad grade I got in elementary school–in 1994, a relatively bad year for internet research, but an even worse year for encyclopedia’s printed in 1963–suddenly made sense.

I spent some time flipping through “A”. Here’s what I can tell you: I am more confused about the 1960s than ever, but I have learned a few things.

Which to me looked more like…