If you are 30, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

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Rey

@ your service
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Feb 8, 2008
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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... Barefoot...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 my 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 know 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! Stamps were 10 cents!

Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!

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


Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car.. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?


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!

There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

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

We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We
had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen 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!

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!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!

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-finks!

And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!


And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort you. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!

And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980
or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

 
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders, and love chatter in places of exercise. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers”.

Socrates - Fifth century B.C.
 
I really did have to walk uphill to my very first school. Sometimes even in the snow. That was at PS91 in The Bronx in 1949......

I didn't have to walk uphill going home though.... :)
 
Entertaining, thank you.

I remember peddling my bike for miles and miles to get somewhere. Actually, anywhere and everywhere. My mother didn't drive, and when I did, she had a chauffeur!
 
Entertaining, thank you.

I remember peddling my bike for miles and miles to get somewhere. Actually, anywhere and everywhere. My mother didn't drive, and when I did, she had a chauffeur!

Now, that was entertaining.... :up
 
Sounds like it was written by a kid to me:) Atari 2600??? I never laid eyes on one of those until I was in my 30's. I did walk to school, about 1 mile each way, grades 1-8 in that one room schoolhouse with one teacher. No running water, double two holers(one for girls, one for boys) out back for, at that time, state of the art facilities.:D
 
Lol! Thanks for sharing Rey!

And you're right, kids today DO have it much easier. I wouldn't trade growing up in the 80's for anything!
 
Wait all week for cartoons? Obviously your grand parents didn't have a C-band dish like mine.

I can't even remember how many times I got a "stomach ache" in 2nd grade and they had to come get me because my parents were at work.

Then I would settle in with a plate of pizza rolls fresh from the microwave as I watched Danger Mouse on Nick.

Man I had it rough
 
Tks for the posting. I, like starman, can add a chapter or two based on being almost twice as old as the author!

TV was black & white, required a warm-up and fiddling with the rabbit ears, and sometimes also required a thump on the side to bring the picture back. The "remote control" was me! Oh - and we only had one TV in the house, and my parents were the "TV Guide"...except for 5PM weekdays when 'Howdy Doody" was on!

Writing a term paper meant hours in front of the Smith Corona and took a ream of paper (most of which was crumbled-up in the trash can). There was no "Liquid Paper" in those days and we had to wash our hands periodically, notably after fixing a ribbon jam.

There was only 1 car which spent most of its time garaged. But a fill-up was less than $5! Learning to drive required (of necessity!) learning how to change a tire and monkey with that little linkage under the air cleaner that sometimes prevented it from starting!

It was always "paper", but you could fill that grocery bag for about $5...then carry it home from the grocery store.

Yes - we walked to/from school...carrying books and in my case, a baritone! In grade school I walked twice each day...including home for lunch and back.

Caller ID might have been an advantage - but you could usually tell which of your neighbors was already using the party-line phone by their voice...and the line of gossip!

Chores included (but were not limited to) cutting the grass, shoveling snow, doing dishes BY HAND, taking out the garbage, bringing-in the mail, paper, and firewood, feeding the pets and removing their residuals, folding laundry after ironing, etc., etc., and if everything was done to our parents' satisfaction we might get our 25-cent weekly allowance...! (I was 12 before I got my first raise...to 50-cents!)

Any other contributors...??? Regards from the "Fifty-Plus Crowd"...
 
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Sounds like it was written by a kid to me:) Atari 2600??? I never laid eyes on one of those until I was in my 30's. I did walk to school, about 1 mile each way, grades 1-8 in that one room schoolhouse with one teacher. No running water, double two holers(one for girls, one for boys) out back for, at that time, state of the art facilities.:D
lol!! mine was pong and coleco vision :D:D
 
How old am I?:

At age 8 I got a BB gun for my Birthday.

At age 9 I got a chemistry set with real dangerous chemicals by today's standards.

At age 10 I got an air pistol pellet gun.

At age 12 I got a 20 Ga shotgun and went on my first hunting trip.

At age 13 I got a RingMaster U control model airplane.

At age 14 I got a Moped Motor Bike.

Yes we had a Black & White TVset and I loved Howdy Doody Time better than cartoons.

My favorite cowboys were Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry.

In 1959 I got a 6 Transistor Radio and became addicted to Tom Swift books.
 
How old am I?:

At age 8 I got a BB gun for my Birthday.

At age 9 I got a chemistry set with real dangerous chemicals by today's standards.

At age 10 I got an air pistol pellet gun.

At age 12 I got a 20 Ga shotgun and went on my first hunting trip.

At age 13 I got a RingMaster U control model airplane.

At age 14 I got a Moped Motor Bike.

Yes we had a Black & White TVset and I loved Howdy Doody Time better than cartoons.

My favorite cowboys were Roy Rodgers and Gene Autry.

In 1959 I got a 6 Transistor Radio and became addicted to Tom Swift books.

Let's see, you'd be more than a few years younger than me. 62 is my guess....
 
I just don't know what to say to all you old coots.:D
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That's great. Everything for me was spot on except the Microwave. They were call convection ovens or something like that.
 
That's great. Everything for me was spot on except the Microwave. They were call convection ovens or something like that.

Yeah, I thought the microwave was a stretch. I'm 33 and I remember having a Microwave in '85. Oddly enough, that one is in my office now, and it STILL WORKS! The ones we've had at home since then die a lot quicker.
 
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