A message to kids today from the older crowd

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what
with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH
ways. yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in
hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard
I had it and how easy they've got it! But now that... I'm over the ripe
old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of
today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you
live in a damn Utopia!

And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't kn ow how good you've
got it!


I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet. If we wanted to
know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up
ourselves, in the card catalog!!

There was no email! ! We had to actually write somebody a letter ...
with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put
it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to
hitchhike to the damn record store and shoplift it yourself!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd
usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone
and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When the phone rang,
you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your
boss, your bookie , your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just
didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like
"Space Invaders" and "asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass! Your guy
was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there
were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever!

And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder
and faster and faster until you died! . Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium
seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old
broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you we re just
screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 1 5
channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! You had
to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!

You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off
your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no
Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning.

Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you
spoiled little rat-bastards!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up . we
had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire ... imagine that! If we
wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it
over the stove forever like an idiot.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too>easy. You're spoiled.

You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,

The "Over 30" crowd

 

At least you didn't have to walk uphill to and from school every day ya lazy 30 something bastages.

 

What about...

We didn't have Power Wheels... If you wanted wheels, you got a big wheel. And even then when you wore a hole in the plastic tire from doing powerslides using the plastic "brake", you were done. Oh, and if the neighborhood fatty even sneezed on it, it would break like PeeWee Herman under Nell Carter.

We didn't have and iPod. We had a briefcase full of tapes that all looked the same. And you couldn't put a magnet anywhere near it, or let it sit in the car.

Don;t even get me started on typing a 3 paper on a cassette typewriter.

 

Oh, tell me more Gramps!

 

LOL

Funny, I'm not going to tell my kids how easy they have it because in reality...we did have it pretty easy. I'm actually glad that I can relate to almost everything my son will go thru. The pressures are exactly the same. I guess the biggest difference now is these kids with guns. When I was growing it up it was just knives.

 

When I was a kid anybody that brandished a weapon instead of throwing hands was considered a coward.

 

You think 15 channel cable was bad.....rabbit ears baby. Three government censored channels if you were lucky and no VCRs or DVD's. We had to read.

 

I remember some pretty off-beat programming on UHF. We even had a local music video channel on UHF before MTV, along with cable, made it to our area. But trust me I'm not going to try to glorify that era!

 

My neighbor had one of those motorized antenna's on top of their house. Just twist the knob until three colors appreared. Of course, they also had the FIRST Atari I ever saw, pretty high living there. Nothing like being a fishing family back in the 70's-early 80's!

 

I remember when my dad got the big C-band dish and TV went from an antenna on the house with three static filled channels to a zillion crystal clear channels. Porno, even! And it was all FREE! FREE, I tell you, FREE! Nirvana while it lasted.

 

:up: :up: :up: :up:

 

I was so poor I got my first pair or shoes when I was eight years old and I walked five miles home backwards just to look at my footprints.

 

That's some good stuff, I had forgotten a lot of that. I just broke 30 a month ago, so I was during the Atari/Nintendo transition time, but do remember some Frogger on Atari. The cassettes in a briefcase thing was good too...definately pimp to have that briefcase full of tapes, half of which were recorded from the radio.

 

And we didn't have car seats either, unless you count laying in the back window of the car or playing in the back of the station wagon.

And dual air bags was what your dad called having mom and Aunt Pat in the car at the same time...


And you kids stay the hell off of my lawn...

 

Big Wheels with back brakes were for rookies.

 

But they were great for spinouts!

 

Oh yeah!! and that plastic reinforced handle lasted about a week.

 

Kick the can anyone? Tag? Digging in the yard? Kids don't go outside anymore, they stay inside all couped up like chickens:down: Tonka trucks were metal and they hurt when someone threw them at you! Lawn darts for crying out loud, can you even buy those things anymore? When we stayed out till 10/11 pm kicking the can or tagging, we played in EVERY yard for about 4 sq. blocks! If you tore your ear off on the Strunks fence or fell off of Mrs. Bairds 40 million thousand foot high porch, SO WHAT!!! Nobody's parents got mad, we were our parents responsibilities and it was our parents fault we were in their yards at night. You never heard of people being sued over swimming pools and such:down: "You don't want 'em to drowned, keep 'em outta my yard Mrs. Gambrel"! Only thing I remember really watching on tv were them Duke boys Fri. @ 8

 

My bigwheel didnt have brakes either. It did have a hole and a flatspot in the front wheel from doing burnouts and powerslides. I probably looked like a caveman when I pulled out since I had a partially square front wheel.
SCRAAAAAAAATCH THUMP SCRAAAAAAAAATCH THUMP SCRAAAAAAAATCH THUMP