Since Sahara brought up age, I decided to be naughty in a different way this week.A friend sent this to me in an email and I altered it slightly. If you are 30 or older, you will think this is hilarious! If not, send it to your parents! They’ll think it’s funny! Don’t show it to anyone under 30, they will only roll their eyes at you and sigh just like you used to do to your parents.
It happened to all of us when we were kids—adults boring us to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up. I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way 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, actually over the age of forty but who’s counting, 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.
When I was a kid, we didn’t have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves… In the card catalog! Do you even know what a card catalog is? Didn’t think so!
There was no email. *gasp* We had to actually write somebody a letter… With a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street to put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there.
There were no MP3’s or Napster. 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 mess it all up! Of course, that was back when they still played music on the radio instead of just talking all the time.
All this instant news and live videos of events unfolding just didn’t happen. You had to stay awake until 11pm to watch the news on TV or wait until the paper got delivered in the morning to find out what was going on.
They invented something great called MTV (Music Television) that played music videos 24/7. What happened to the music videos? Now MTV is nothing but reality shows.
We didn’t have fancy stuff like call waiting or voice mail! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal and had to call back, 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, a collections agent, you just didn’t know! You had to pick it up and take your chances.
When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked in, we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7-foot cord that ran to the phone—not the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom guess what we had to do… Hang up and talk to them later.
Cell phones, forget about it. You had to walk until you found a payphone that worked and scrounge up the cash to make a call.
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Play Station or X-Box video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600, baby. With games like Space Invaders and Asteroids, and the graphics were horrible! 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.
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!
Some of us had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu! For those of us who didn’t have cable we only had 3 maybe 4 channels and if the president was on it was on the 3 good channels. To find out what was on you had to use a little book called a TV Guide. 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!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing or a pan with HOT oil and Real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever like an idiot.
For the writers. There were no computers with lovely programs like MS Word that underlined possible errors and checked your spelling. You had to stick a piece of correction tape in there and type over your mistakes. And you couldn’t cut and paste paragraphs with a few keystrokes when you typed on a manual typewriter. Editors didn’t tack on electronic comments that could be removed. They got out a red pen and marked up the page, which you now had to retype.
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
9 comments:
ROFL!! Nic, this is so true. Just turning 40 myself I see this all the time.
I have neices ages 19 and 21 that think life is so hard for their age group. I laughed at them and said try living it when I was your age.OMG, Let's not let anything happen to dish TV, Aunt Deb you can really exspect me to hand write my report for school. It has to be sent in as an email.
That one made me laugh.
There is no telling what it will be like when my 9 {who is already starting this trend} and 5 year old gets to that age.
But, Please God give me the strength to get through it.
OMG what a blast into the past! As someone who has grown children, and little contact (except other people's children) I am stunned by today's kids. Every day I go out and run - a lot of time after school has let out and I never see kids out doing what I did as a child, riding bikes, skating, jumping rope (Yes, we actually did that). If I do see one, they're ambling down the sidewalk with a cell phone glued to their head.
EEEK! The scarey part about all this is that chldren and teenagers are now staring to suffer from illnesses and ailments that traditionally struck people who are older.
And there's a nasty trend I've noticed. A little something I call the "tail wagging the dog." Kids telling their parents what to do instead of the other way around. And parents saying things like "when we get home you really need to clean your room, okay?"
WHAT??? What happened to "if you don't clean your room, you're road kill."
And what happened to kids who said "yes ma'am" instead of "whatever" or "you want it clean you clean it"?
Obviously I'm a dinosaur whose lifespan has allowed me to witness the changing of the times. Personally I'm not so sure I'm in favor of all the changes. But then, I AM a dinosaur :)
That was great. I may only be 30 with two small children, but I was from a poor family. A lot of those things (cell phone and such), we didn't have.
When I had to go to school, if I missed the bus (elementary) or had no change (junior and high school), I had to walk, even in the rain, to school. I didn't have a car or a license until I was 24. There was no real need for one in San Diego. The kids who had cars, those were the spoiled brats. *smile*
It will be interesting to see what my kids are like when older.
Miss, Austin
I had to comment on this.
As one who knows what you are speaking of. I can often remember hiking it to school in the snow, rain, what ever the weather elements were at the time. In my head the whole way there, I can still recall my father saying,” Boy, quit your complaining I had to walk to school in blizzards 10 miles down the road."
But in retrospect I don't see today’s young adults making it with out the computer age. It would be up to teaching them what a hand written report was. [Laughing here]
As we do get older we watch the younger generation and think, "They will be running our country one day."
BOB
OMG after reading that, I'm so glad I'm here and not back there!
I remember the cut and paste and editing a manuscript meant retyping a page and if you cut word count, AUGH, could end up retyping the entire thing.
I love love love modern technology and wish I'd had it like today's technology when I was growing up! And thank God I don't have to spend entire days at the library researching. I enjoyed it, but it was a big time-consuming task.
Where we live, the kids are out playing basketball, in the pools, riding their bikes, etc. Maybe it's just the region where we live, but they seem pretty normal to me. Oh, it's a lot easier for parents to keep up with them thanks to cell phones! I love cell phones, baby.
I think every generation frowns upon the one coming after them because they are differnt, but really, my contemporaries were nothing like my parents' generation. We had our own music, our own slang, our own culture, our own fashoin statements, and so it is in history and of course as it should be. (g)
Great post, Nic! And I love all the comments!
Oh, Ci, girlie! You are not a dino!!! Now go clean your room or Tonight's dindin is the road kill from yesterday. (g) I loved your post,you are such a hoot!
Poor kids. They have some good stuff that makes life easier in some ways, and then these same things turn around and bite them in the ass. Even if I hated mine and couldn't wait to be an adult, I wouldn't trade my youth for theirs. They're bombarded from all sides nowadays.
Every generation looks at the one coming and tells them how easy they have it, and how hard it was for them. WE are raising this generation. WE give them all that stuff. WE put headphones on our pregnant bellies and play endless hours of Mozart so they go on to The Perfect School, have The Perfect Job, ad nauseam.
Poor kids.
LOL These are great!
My brother had Atari. We played board games. *g*
Kids don't seem to play outdoors anymore. I remember when we got home from school, we'd be outside until we got called in for supper. All the moms would stand on their front porches and yell. LOL
I still don't own a cell phone. :-)
I think technology is fabulous. I love the GPS navigation in my car (and love to argue with its directions), love being able to find my son by calling his cell phone. Don't even get me started on writing. There's no way I could have done it on an old manual typewriter. I can't wait to see what new technology is available in another 30 years!
The cell phones are annoying though. The younger generations answer their calls no matter what. They can be out to dinner, in a job interview, it doesn't seem to matter. They tune out life happening around them and gab on the phone.
I still see kids outside getting exercise, but a lot less than used to be. And working in a children's hospital, I can see the results. Many kids are overweight and have no clue what exercise is.
I've had parents who cry when their kids cry. The child is having a safe medical test that is not hurting them, but start crying so the mom gets all upset and cries. Huh? I asked a few why they were crying, their response. I never let him/her cry. Why the heck not? Many times the kids will refuse to cooperate and the parents say okay. What? That's insane. Who is the parent? Sheesh!
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