When You Realize Your Parents Were Way Cooler Than You (31 photos)

The generation gap is as old as time. Younger people often struggle to relate to their elders, dismissing their parents' concerns as trivial and viewing the older generation as hopelessly out of touch. But sometimes, a single glance through an old family photo album is all it takes to set the record straight.







"My mom served in the military and flew helicopters."





"My mom studying to be a welder in 1984. She was the only woman in her class."



"This is my dad and his mother in 1959. She was a vet. And that's their pet lion, who lived with them for two years."



"My dad at his first job at NASA."



"My dad diving off a submarine. Pacific Ocean, summer of 1983."



"My mom as a homicide detective in the 1980s."



"My dad fighting Chuck Norris and taking him down!"



"My mom doing a handstand on two skateboards in the 1980s."



"My parents in 1972 outside their store in Paris."



"My dad taking a smoke break while fighting Saddam Hussein's army in the 1980s."



"Mom holding me while typing her master's thesis on a Macintosh, 1991."



"My dad at his Bar Mitzvah, holding a Playboy magazine, 1972."



"My mom at the police academy, 1984."



"My dad in Vietnam back in 1969, long before selfies existed."



"My dad fishing... off the top of a nuclear submarine, 1966."



"My dad in the Philippines, early '80s."



"My dad's high school yearbook photo, 1970s."



"My dad with the motorcycle he shipped to England so he could ride it all across Europe, 1973."



"My dad on a motorcycle trip across Africa, mid-1980s."



"My parents and their friends climbing Mount St. Helens, 1973."



"A self-portrait of my dad in the 1980s."



"My mom at age 15, smoking a cigarette with a broken arm at an Allman Brothers Band concert, 1979."



"My dad's student ID card."



"My dad was a fighter pilot in the '80s."



"My mom and her surfboard in the '80s."



"My dad showing off one of his catches, 1987."



"My dad at the Live Aid concert, 1985."



"I always knew my mom was cool, but I had no idea she was THIS cool, 1985."



"My dad in 1988."



"My dad at age 18. He ran away from home and took a bus from California to Texas just to compete in this contest."