When We Were Kids . . .

(thanks to Mitzi)
. . . adults used to bore me with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were. How they walked twenty-five miles to school every morning.... Uphill... Barefoot... BOTH ways… yadda, yadda, yadda

And I remember promising myself that 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 (never you mind how ripe my age is!), 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, REALLY 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! But first we had to get past the nasty librarian who was a Tri-Fecta Specialist in glaring, finger shaking and shushing.

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter - with a pen, on paper! And our parents made us write thank you notes for every gift we received! Then we had to walk all the way to the street corner and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there! Stamps were 10 cents!

When it came to cutting the grass, raking the leaves, shoveling the snow it was us kids who did it. There was no lawn crews circling the neighborhood doing what our parents considered the work of teenagers. The happiest I ever saw my dad was the summer afternoons when he'd sit on a lawn chair with a cold Coors in hand and watch my brother and I work on HIS lawn!

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". OH MY GOD !!!  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, Wii 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!

As for TV - don't get me started. First, we had 1 (one!) TV in the house. And you HAD to sit with your ENTIRE family to watch a show from a choice of 6 channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, WGN, WTTW and WFLD) 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!

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.  My brother and I used to ride in the way back of our VW beetle. Our butts would get hot because we were sitting right over the engine. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if mom stopped suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!  Even worse - we had to talk to each other! Sing songs. Make goofy faces at the people in other cars.  Why you ask?  Because we didn't have TV's in the car, video players, gameboys, yada, yada, yada.

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 30 Crowd