May

4

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 25 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 garbage 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 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 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 MP3s 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 messed 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 the tape would come undone, cause that's how we rolled, dig?

We didn't have fancy garbage 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 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 3D graphics! We had the Atari 2600, with games like Space Invaders and Asteroids. 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!

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 butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel! 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 rats!

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

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 or before!

Regards,

The Over 40 Crowd

John Lamberg writes:

At least you had an Atari. When I was a kid, all I had to play with were model rockets (and I could go to the hobby store and buy Jetx fuse, not that silly battery powered electronic igniter), chemistry set, erector set, slot cars, CB radio, build your own shortwave radio from Heathkit, and I actually had to ride my bike to go fishing… Hey, that sounds like more fun than an Atari.


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4 Comments so far

  1. George Parkanyi on May 4, 2009 8:18 pm

    I was a broker back in 1982. When the Atari first came out, I remember paying the outrageous sum of $300 or $400 or whatever it was then and then staying up all night - yes, till dawn - with my broker buddy Allen Ransome - playing f*&%ing “Space Invaders”. It was quite pathetic really how we got hooked on trying to beat this stupid game. Ah, youth misspent.

    Cheers,
    George

  2. jeff watson on May 4, 2009 8:40 pm

    Socrates had problems with the lifestyle of the younger generation when he said,

    "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."

    Jeff

  3. Craig Bowles on May 5, 2009 6:47 am

    4 and 5 year olds are putting in full days at school. (We could graduate them a few years early and put them to work to pay off the deficit.) They miss out on a lot of fun stuff like digging worms and fishing with the old ladies. How about running around all day playing in the woods. You’re only a kid once. I’ll take eating spam sandwiches over being a kid these days anytime.

  4. John LaBorne on May 5, 2009 9:58 pm

    Sports don't have to be organized. Some of my fondest memories of the 70s were pick-up games. Mostly baseball and football. I never remember aruguing over a single 'call'. Majority rule, and a gentleman's game it was back then. No cell phones, how did we survive? First video game we waited months to get then had to fight for time on the one TV: Pong

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