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 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!

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 would usually talk over the beginning and fuck 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'. 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 were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on-screen 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 Tivo? recording numerous TV shows and watching them at your leisure? Screw that. If you missed your show, you had to wait six months to see the rerun!

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



*I'm sure this has been emailed around for years but dammit, this is the first time I've ever seen it lol...

WELL, FIDDLE-DEE-DEE!!!

Anxiety said:

Pfft. Easy? We're gonna get global warming, probably more wars, wicked bad inflation, population increase, etc, etc. We've got it great.

Volitan said:

We had the approaching Ice Age, just lived thru Vietnam, and you don't know inflation until you lived thru the Carter years. Please.

Byron said:

Anxiety and I in 30 years...

Byron said:

yeah, but we got to see the first three star wars movies the first time around in theaters...not that jacked-up CGI crap that lucas pawned off in the '90s.

and we got the muppet show. what do THEY get? BRATZ.

Byron said:

there's nothing quite like only having been politically aware during the bush administration, though.

Byron said:

OMG, you mf's almost made me spit this WONderful grapefruit margarita all over my keyboard

Anxiety said:

We also had posters of Farrah Fawcett looking a little nipply and mayyyyybe with the word "sex" super-imposed somewhere in her hair. What do they get? Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan spread eagle all over the internet.

We win that one, too ...

Byron said:

Well, I know your gas didn't cost $4/a gallon, or worry about extreme overpopulation. Goddamn I hope they colonize Mars in the next 30.....

evenstar said:

CalhounSq said:

Volitan said:

No, we could only buy gas on "even" or "odd" days, depending upon the last digit of our license plate...and when we DID buy gas, we had to wait in a line that stretched three blocks. And people have been worrying about "extreme over population" for the last 50 years lol...

Byron said:

I'd take Farrah any day.

ZombieKitten said:

At least you had music television that actually played music! And you didn't have reality TV.

coolcat said:

that's very true! when i was a teenager, on a friday night i could choose between:

MTV
friday night videos (which, okay, was only an hour or 90 minutes, but for a few years we got new episodes of SCTV right afterwards, so i was in hog heaven anyway)
TBS all night videos
Night Flight on USA Network (my favorite)

coolcat said:

We didn't have YouTube...and NO Tay Zonday, either.

Byron said:

i don't even know what tay zonday is

Anxiety said:

day after monday

ZombieKitten said:

Nice. Did you just think of that?

ZombieKitten said:

2the9s said:

after I started typing it in fact

Byron said:

That picture!

I remember playing Russian Roulette with the phone! It was a GAMBLE. I also remember having to do my reports and papers with research from microphiche (spelling?) or microfilm. HAHA! And I grew up in the 80's! I also remember my first two years of college being introduced to Internet research.

To defend doing research the old fashioned way, I had to conduct a study on how the Internet has reduced the quality of work from college students. Just some info.

But yeah, these 80's babies really are the spolied generation. There are studies on that too. The the work ethic has gone down since us (gen X). They said the same about us in the 90's though...

Anxiety said:

KatSkrizzle said:

we learned to type on typewriters. no such thing as internet when I was at uni

KatSkrizzle said:

Ah,yes, the microhfiche...turning the two dials like an Etch-A-sketch in just such a way to find the article you're looking for

We had computers, but there was no Internet. It was just for papers.

In fact I had the oldest piece of crap computer that I wrote all my papers on my first two years in undergrad. You could so tell it was old as crap. But I still got those A's! Then I got a REAL computer with enough speed for Internet in 2000! I was with it!
[Edited 2/14/08 19:43pm]

ZombieKitten said:

No wussy "copy and paste" function, either...just White Out!