I was sent this email by my school librarian, she figured it was about my age and all. I found it amusing. I've added or amended parts (as shown in parentheses) so it was a little more applicable to me (me as in Bob, yeah, I don't write on here often, but I do on occasion).
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 (Yes, this is very true, very annoying).
And 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 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 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 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!! (and then you had to open the book up and look for what you wanted, so much work!!)
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! (And don't even get me started about the cost of long distant calls, if you were in another state, you didn't exist!)
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 butts! Nowhere was safe! (I don't know about that).
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! (you can't steal music from itunes stupid people)
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 come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig? (we had CDs when I was in highschool, but I still had my fair share of cassette tapes, something my students didn't know existed.)
We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!
There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GoODness !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are. (ha! Yeah, instead of texting in high school, we got in trouble passing notes to each other).
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 didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D 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 LIFE! (we had super Mario when I was a kid, just everything was still 2-D, no first person shooters or anything. And for that matter, we didn't have World of Warcraft or other MMORPGs, we had to do it by hand with paper and dice).
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 up and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?! (no, we had remotes when I was a kid, we were just as lazy when it comes to that).
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-finks!
And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that! (umm, maybe this email is a little older than I thought because we had those when I was a kid).
And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!
And car seats - oh, please! Mom 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 she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" 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! (or 1980s, you see I was only 2 years old in the year 1980).
Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd
