When I Was a Kid...


A friend sent this to me via e-mail.  It's so great, I had to share...
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





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 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 Forty, 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 catalogue!





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 MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! 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 @#*% 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 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!





There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends"! 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.





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!





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! NO REMOTES! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!





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!





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!





Regards,

The Over 40 Crowd

Comments

Brindy said…
Absolutely brilliant! I'm sending this on to my friends.

Thank you for sharing it.
Simply Suthern said…
LOL, We only had AM radio and then 8 Track came out. We had to install an adaptor to get even crappy FM channels. Im 50 so we didnt even have the Atari till after I was married. WE had 3 channels on the TV. 19 inch TVs were as large as you could get. No AC in the house or the car. I could go on and on but ya know what. We had fun all the same.
Brian Miller said…
ha. love it...this brought back some memories...at my parents house not too long ago i found a bunch of old tapes made from the radio...the boys got a kick out out of some of the songs...
Sarah said…
I am just old enough that some of that is true for me too. I remember never being buckled in in the car and also we played outside all of the time. We did have an Atari but didn't get to use it that much. Email wasn't around much until I was in at least junior high and even then I didn't use it much at all until well into high school. I still have a tape deck in my car though! And it's not very old.
raydenzel1 said…
and don't forget walking to school in the snow! when I mention that to my kids, they point out that we live in Florida!

Popular posts from this blog

January Blows...

Heard It Through A Cube Wall...Version 3.0