My Mom was a faithful crossword puzzle solver who daily would tackle and knock out the Washington Post’s offering. However, some days when I would stop by to see her, she would have the paper and puzzle nearby and ask me about a clue that had stumped her. She would often comment: “J. Scott, I feel so old and out of it because I can never get any of these clues having to do with today’s pop culture people. Who are all these people and why haven’t I heard about them?”

I would often try to reassure Mom by saying something along the lines “Don’t worry about it Mom, you’re not missing anything because most of ’em aren’t worth knowing about anyway.”

I thought of those exchanges with my Mom just the other day as I looked thru Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people of 2024. (My thanks to my friend Robert Willey for giving me the subscription to Time. It has been a very long time (get it?) since I have had a subscription to any magazine other than AARP. )

As I scanned thru the Time listing of the world’s most influential people though, I was a little taken aback that out of the 100 listed, I recognized only about a dozen or so of them. And thank God for all the folks on the list with M’s in their names as in Mark Cuban, Michael J. Fox, Kylie Minogue, Giorgia Meloni and Patrick Mahomes or else I would have been way down in the single digits of people whom I recognized.

For the complete list (click here) and see how many you recognize. And please, you don’t need to tell me how many more of them you knew than I did and make me, like my Mom, feel anymore out of touch than I already am.)

Note that the accompanying write ups for the individuals who made the list are done by their associates and friends who have some interesting and funny insights. For instance, former Yankee Alex Rodriguez discusses Patrick Mahomes in this excerpt where he notes:

Music-wise, Brady sent me this cool little tune about cool little bars by Ashley Mcbryde.

Her line about names and dates carved into the tabletops sounds a little similar to having folks currently sign the old Buzzy counter top. It was very appropriate that my first signee was my long-time-Scotland-neighbor-growing-up Robby Hall.