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It had to happen, and now it has.

I was attending a social event full of 20-something adults. The talk turned to popular music back in the day.

I said I used to have a large library of records — 33s, 45s and 78s.

Blank looks all around. Finally, one youngster broke the ice. “Uh, Bob,” she said, “what do those numbers mean?”

Thus did this group join the throngs who have no idea what happened on November 22, 1963. And have never used — or heard of — a rotary-dial phone. And have never done research in a library instead of on their smartphones.

I was too dumbstruck to answer the 33-45-78 question. But here’s what I wish I had said:

Dear Generation Whatever:

Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, I collected records. They were made of vinyl. Some had one song on one side and one song on the other. Those were 45s and 78s.

The numbers referred to how many revolutions per minute the record would make on a turntable. Yes, a turntable.

An arm would be placed carefully at the first groove on the record. Sometimes a machine would accomplish this. Sometimes a person would.

We would dance to the sounds of Fats Domino, Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and a hip-shaker from Memphis named Elvis Presley. But it was kind of hard to get into the slipstream of the music when we either had to wait for the record player to load the next platter or do it ourselves.

Then, someone invented the 33 (or, more accurately, 33⅓). It was known as an LP — for Long Playing. It had about eight songs on each side. What an improvement that was!

If you were dancing with your best girl and wanted to accomplish a long clinch, you no longer had to wait for a fresh song to start playing. After one track on an LP, the next would begin in mere seconds.

And if you wanted to start a record collection, as I did, the 33 was by far your best bet. It gave you a longer break from your homework. To hear “Don’t Be Cruel,” followed immediately by “Love Me,” was a technological marvel.

The 78s were stiff, which was the good news as well as the bad.

Good because they were useful when it snowed. My pals and I would repair to a park with a case full of 78s we no longer cared about. A raucous game of Platter Frisbee would ensue.

Bad because the 78s would crack and break.

Maybe that was planned obsolescence, and maybe it wasn’t. Regardless, we were pushed firmly into the arms of 33s and 45s. Those were softer and more pliable, and much less likely to break during Frisbee-thons.

Today, because the music marketplace is so jam-packed, a new song or album doesn’t land very hard on the public consciousness. But back in the heyday of 33-45-78s, any new release was a very big deal.

Top 40 radio DJs would lead the charge: “And now, here’s a new one by Carl Perkins! Get your dancing shoes on, boys and girls! Here’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes!’”

We would caravan to the local record store after school. If there were eight of us, there went eight copies of Perkins’ latest hit.

We’d rush to our respective homes, play the new song a million times, then call one another (yes, on rotary-dial phones).

Homework? What was homework, when we could bop, shimmy and croon, “Well, it’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and go, cat, go!”

How do today’s teens acquire music? By downloading it (a verb I still don’t entirely understand). I’m sure they resist homework as thoroughly and as melodically as we did.

But we at least had music at any of three speeds. To cue up a 45 or a 78 was to go quick and dirty. To cue up a 33 was to settle in and luxuriate.

I will close with this, dear young people:

If I had to do it today, I could lift the arm of a record player — if I still owned one — and place it exactly at the beginning of a 33-45-78, without missing a note.

True, this skill is no longer useful. But it’s a memory that makes me smile and hum the opening bars of “Rock Around the Clock.”

You think I don’t still remember all the words? You must think I’m old. Imagine that.

Bob Levey is a national award-winning columnist.