Here’s something my friend Tami emailed a couple of months ago, I saved it to share. And for the record, my parents didn’t call me into the room to change the channel on the TV for them.
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 30 (ok maybe 40), 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 don’t know how good you’ve got it.
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!! You 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, and you had to pay money for a stamp to make it all happen.
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 usually come unwrapped rendering it useless. Cause hey, that’s how we rolled.
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! Beep-beep-beep, and you had no idea they had tried to call. There weren’t any frickin’ cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn’t make or receive a call. You actually had to be out of touch with your “friends”. OH MY GOD!!! Think of the horror. 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 had “party lines”. It’s one way to get to know your neighbors real well.)
We didn’t have PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3D 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 real life)!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on television. 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!!! I remember getting called into the parents bedroom just to change the cannel for them. There was no Cartoon Network, 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 ratfinks! (Yep Saturday mornings where great)
We didn’t have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that. I remember our first microwave…. baked potatoes for months.
And car seats – oh, please. Mom or dad 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 they had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for being a pig and calling “shotgun” 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