I got this by email, and I thought it deserved a wider
audience. It can also be found on the
Internet. Enjoy!
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. 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’d usually talk over the beginning and @#*%
it all up!
And talk about hardship? You couldn’t just download porn.
You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude
to buy you a copy of “Hustler” at the 7-11. Those were
your options!
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” 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!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as
stadium seating. All the seats were the same height so 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 onscreen 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 brat-bastards!
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 1980!
Footnotes
In my case, I’m over forty.
We did have Microwaves by the mid-seventies.
Wikipedia:
Sales figures of 40,000 units for the US industry in 1970 grew
to one million by 1975.
But Space Invaders? Heck, we had to settle for
Pong!
Microwaves may have been available but they weren’t affordable to the average family until the late 80’s, early 90’s.
Get the mp3--it’s better! This is a transcript of one of Ernie Cline’s spoken words. The original mp3 as well as some others can be found on his site, here: [link] .
Eh, I’m not even 30 and I can remember having a rotary phone, using dials to change the TV channel and modems so slow that I’d type a sentence and wait for it to appear on the screen (in case there were any typos) before proceeding with the next line.
15 channels? you Americans don’t know how good you had it! Try growing up in the Netherlands, where we had a whopping 2 channels in our own language, plus 3 German ones where everything is voice-overed (imagine watching Magnum PI, and hearing “hallo freunde” instead of "hi guys")
Haven’t been back to the homeland in a couple of years, but 15 Dutch channels is probably about what they have now...
Sam posted this funny account of what it was like to grow up back in the days of old. Like Sam, I’m over 40, so boy do we still have tales to tell. And our kids will hear them......
There were no blog comments growing up. But we did have pieces of paper that got passed around for everyone to add to.
I always laugh when parents recoil in horror at Livejournal or MySpace bullying and other things like that. It’s the same old stuff, it’s just that it has a URI now.
It’s the same old stuff, it’s just that it has a URI now.
To be fair, it’s also indexed by multiple search engines and the Wayback Machine. We passed notes in band practice, but they weren’t Googled, mashed up, Photoshopped, Farked, or archived for all time.
Microwaves may have been available but they weren’t affordable to the average family until the late 80’s, early 90’s.
*shrug*
When I was in high school (late 70’s), we had one. I do remember it being “new”, but not particularly out of the ordinary.
Shortly after I got married (1982) I remember purchasing a microwave - on an assistant programmers salary. At the time there were entire specialty stores at the local malls specializing in selling Microwaves (and related paraphernalia).
I remember our first remote control ... it was a small box with a rotary dial and it had a long cord that reached to a bigger box on the TV. You could advance channel by channel. I don’t remember if it changed volume.
You americans had got it too easy. I only had 2 TV channels when I was a kid. And they only emmited like 8 hours a day. And no Atari either, just some stupid teletennis (and I was the only kid at my class who had those!)
In the uk cable tv wasn’t generally available (not where I’ve lived anyhow) - not sure quite when Channel 4 (yes, the fourth channel) came along, maybe mid-80’s. Remote control? Pah! Black & white set with those long cylinder buttons that make a crunchy noise (ok, ok, I think most people I know that watched tv had colour by mid-80’s). Microwaves - again, maybe a decade later in the uk. I’m not sure how general this is, but it certainly seemed like for a long while the UK was at least 5 years the US in terms of internet too (heh, and now I’m finally on ISDN). Home stealing is taping John Peel. Walkmans! Luxury. What about those brick-like cassette machines that called themselves portable? I’ve no idea what stadium seating is. Anyhow, we used to make our own entertainment - can the kids of today do that? (Loud music, cider & occasional groping - ah, those were the days...)
Sam Ruby reposts a letter to today’s Web 2.0 wunderkinder about how they wouldn’t have lasted five minutes in the old days, you know, like 1980: There was no email. We had to actually write somebody a letter ... with a pen. Then you had to walk all...
This struck a note with me, being in my mid-30’s and all: "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. 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......
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This struck a note with me, being in my mid-30’s and all: "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...
From reading this blog, you might come away thinking I’m some sort of botany freak, what with the constant stream of flower photos I keep posting. But really that isn’t true at all. Most of the time I can’t identify them, and I’m sure I couldn’t...
Baby boomers always seem to label my generation as narcissistic, lazy, and self entitled. The Boomers whine and send emails like this and complain that while we send emails and text messages they had to write letters and use landlines. I really...