One for my generation....

taoist

The Sage
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One for my generation....

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 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'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% 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!
Don't get me started on the cell phone for kids issue. We all have fallen into the trap of "it's for their safety".
But it is amazing that we came and went and never had a phone on us and we all lived.
A cell phone!?! Hell, back then phones at home still had cords on them. Imagine being tied to one spot?
Roaming charges...yeah, we had those...when we strayed too far from home we got charged with it. and got our butts beat...there are some roaming charges for you!
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" and the graphics sucked ass!
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!
Nowadays kids have a million activities after school and on the weekends that they need to be taken to.
When we were young, our Mom's didn't take us anywhere, except to the grocery store (and back then they didn't even have to take us in, they could just leave us in the car!).
Heck they didn't even drive us to school...your transportation was your stinking little feet. Not to mention they would never have paid money for all of those activities...we were told, "What, do you think? We_re made of money?".
The answer was _NO!_ and we walked to where we wanted to go.
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 now there are DVD players in the cars!
God forbid they just stare out the window like we did. Now Mom's can't say, "If you don't behave I am going to come across this seat and beat your butt". No! Because they would hit their heads on the damn DVD player!
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 JiffyPop 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 1975!


:iagree:
 

DOGS THAT BARK

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Your getting old Taoist! :) Amazing isn't it--wonder what changes are in store for us in next 20 years. The Jetson cartoon my not be that far fetched.
 

dawgball

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Two things:

1. I still prefer making my popcorn on the stove.
2. I can't believe there was no mention of making your own "remixes" with a dual-cassette tape deck (better known as a BOOM box!)
 

bjfinste

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dawgball said:
2. I can't believe there was no mention of making your own "remixes" with a dual-cassette tape deck (better known as a BOOM box!)

I spent days and nights making the perfect mixes back in the day.
 

Hokie Fan

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Or how about waiting all day to catch that Van Halen (with David Lee) on the radio to try to tape it only to have the damn disc jockey talk over part of Eruption...
 

dawgball

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I also can't believe there wasn't something about MTV having music on it. I didn't have cable, so when I was at my cousins house we would sit around and wait for the Thriller video to come on. I remember they used to schedule when they would play it, so people could be ready and tape it. How weird to think about that.

Also, did anyone else see Real Sex 1 on HBO when it originally aired? I thought that was straight hard-core porn?

Who is the first one that can name the song that starts....

"Woke up quick at about noon..."
 

dawgball

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I don't know why that song hit my brain, but I have been going over the first half of that song since!
 

Blazer

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Staples of our youth:

VCRs - Had to watch the movie without "bouns footage" and movies only had one ending

Payphones - odd creatures on the side of the road that you had to use to call to tell mom where you were...and where you were going...and wait for it.....when you would be home!

computer class- I know it's hard to believe, but computers weren't in every class. They weren't even in every home. We actually took a class that taught us how to use a computer...IN HIGH SCHOOL!

Tiger handheld games- No PSP or even gameboys, small dinky games that made an odd dink-donk noise. Most games were drivng or flying down a tunnel and all you could do is move left or right until it sped up so fast you died hitting a rock-looking like thing.

Lunch at school- no "salad bars" or Taco bell. Lunch at school had one, maybe two choices (one usually being rectangle pizza and corn) . Government cheeze and instant potatoes fueled us thoughout hte day.

Neon- Trust me it was popular....and it was bad.

Generra "body heat shirts"- Ok, this one is hard to describe but they were real popular to wear with your Z.Cavorrichis (sp) and they would change color (from pink to purple) when touched.

NKOTB- nevermind

Jelly shoes- I never understood these, but chicks had many many pairs. They also had bracelets, I didn't understand those either....

Pegging your pants- Geez, this is embarassing.


I gotta stop.
 
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