[JeffJS]

Sent to me in an email, it's probably been around the net millions of times but it has a ring of truth to it. That is, for certain age groups. I didn't change any of the text so if it offends you, find the person who originated it and complain to them.

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!

1) 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!!

2) 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!

3) 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!

4) 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!

5) 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?

6) 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!

7) 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 GOSH !!! 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.

8) 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!

9) 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!

10) 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?!?!

11) 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!

12) And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

13) 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 1970 or any time before!

[Nesster]

LOL.... born in '57, my age group was regarded as the end of the baby boom, since then revised to include the early 60s. The general effect was, my age kids (this would be 7-8) organized the gang of younger kids, and we were separated from and enemies to the older kids (9 on up), back in '65.... yes, we all spent our time outside, and doing all sorts of stuff kids still may do... we had something like 5 channels (counting VHF, if you could get it with that extra antenna)... and our Instamatic camera...

[gokenin]

I love it you know as someone who is 40 I wholeheartedly agree with it

[pixelsaurus]

It is hard living a Monty Python kind of existence
Monty Python - Four Yorkshiremen videos - by Video Site

[wlachan]

The mental state of humanity is never about materialism. People with everything money can buy could still be on drug or kill themselves. When people are in healthy mental state, they will adapt. Those being fed with mental garbage by their parents at their younger age, will grow up struggle.

[Ratmagiclady]

Eh, when I was a kid the same people were whining the same things about Jimmy Carter and his memory, and there was actual Commies to worry about.

Now they want to canonize Ronnie as a saint, when there was *no one* so right wing at the time that didn't think he wasn't going to get us nuked at any minute... Even the Religious Right, they just liked saying it was about horses or something. Those were the days...

I mean, hey, if the Yupsters could live as if it was sudden obliteration at any moment, (thanks to the miracle of powdered cocaine) instead of the current abstractions, imagine the true punk rock spirit of the time.

Of course, they were trying to scare us about 'terrorists' even then, but it just couldn't compare to the truly nostalgia-worthy youthful zeitgeist of Mutual Assured Destruction, Oh, Goddess Our Fundie President Is A Senile B-List MacCarthyite Cowboy Actor.......'

[shooz]

DUCK and COVER!
We had the drills all the time.

In high school we had to dodge exploding Pintos on the WALK to school. In the snow, rain, sleet, whatever. We also ate sandwiches out of brown bags.


Now all they have to worry about is run away Toyotas.....!

[ChrisPlatt]

Pentaxforums thread: We played in the streets!

Chris

[JeffJS]

Eh, when I was a kid the same people were whining the same things about Jimmy Carter and his memory, and there was actual Commies to worry about.

Now they want to canonize Ronnie as a saint, when there was *no one* so right wing at the time that didn't think he wasn't going to get us nuked at any minute... Even the Religious Right, they just liked saying it was about horses or something. Those were the days...

I mean, hey, if the Yupsters could live as if it was sudden obliteration at any moment, (thanks to the miracle of powdered cocaine) instead of the current abstractions, imagine the true punk rock spirit of the time.

Of course, they were trying to scare us about 'terrorists' even then, but it just couldn't compare to the truly nostalgia-worthy youthful zeitgeist of Mutual Assured Destruction, Oh, Goddess Our Fundie President Is A Senile B-List MacCarthyite Cowboy Actor.......'

Well, RML, I don't want to get this moved to P&R because I don't even look there anymore. I'll just take it from that you are not a fan of Ronalds and leave it alone there.

DUCK and COVER!
We had the drills all the time.

In high school we had to dodge exploding Pintos on the WALK to school. In the snow, rain, sleet, whatever. We also ate sandwiches out of brown bags.


Now all they have to worry about is run away Toyotas.....!

Never did the duck and cover but my first Car was a 1973 Pinto. They were only flammable if hit in the rear.

[YT]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcNeorjXMrE[/YT]

[Ratmagiclady]

Well, RML, I don't want to get this moved to P&R because I don't even look there anymore. I'll just take it from that you are not a fan of Ronalds and leave it alone there.

True 'nuff, but it just looks like Ferris Bueller/not suitable for TV if you don't bear in mind we all expected to vaporize for like ten years at least.

I mean, you know, everyone had a plan for what random thing to do in case of 'The Bomb,' ....We grew up in the flash radius of a priority target. When Reagan made his ill-advised joke about 'We begin bombing in fifteen minutes,' we just went, "Ah, it's Defcon kiss-your-own-for-once, seeya! "

Frankly, I think most of the country just never dealt with that, and it's therefore *still there.* Y'know?

I mean, it wasn't 'duck and cover,' it wasn't any great cause: no rhyme, reason, promise, or possible good outcome, or anything. It was gonna be random, arbitrary, some apocalyptic dude deciding to let loose, dropping some sword of Damocles just cause he didn't like 'Commies' and that'd be that. Just always there. Always.

Every minute, with all else going on. Surreal.

Never did the duck and cover but my first Car was a 1973 Pinto. They were only flammable if hit in the rear.

Ah, the simple things in life. I always wanted a Gremlin since I was like so high.

[larryinlc]

You know what though?? I enjoyed growing up in the 60's. Life was cheap back then. I think now I pay a good 300.00 per month for stuff that didn't exist when I was a kid.

[Tom S.]

I predate some of that stuff.

We didn't even have Atari systems to play with. Gaming meant going outside and playing baseball/football/basketball, or staying inside to play monopoly or cards.

Some of us poorer folks couldn't even afford private telephones and used party lines. Party lines were single phone lines split between two to four people. Each person had a distinctive ring to let them know the call was for them, but any of the parties could listen in on the other parties' conversation.

Radios and televisions contained vacuum tubes instead of transistors. Turning either of them on required a lengthy wait (by today's standards) for the tubes to heat up enough for the set to operate. Car radios were also tube and required a lot of juice. You could easily run your car battery dead by listening to the radio for just a couple of hours without the engine running.

Television had thirteen channels, but only three stations: CBS, NBC and ABC. If you were lucky like we were to live near Canada, you could get a fourth station, CBC. I was 12 years old before we had a color tv. Before that, everything was black and white. I grew up thinking WWII was fought in black and white...

Family cameras were Brownies made by Eastman Kodak. Professional photographers still used plate cameras. Photo journalists were just catching on to 35 mm.

During the summer, we played outdoors until the streetlights came on around 10 o'clock. Even then, we were allowed to stay out providing we stayed in our own yard or the neighbors.

Being bad in school meant getting a swat on the butt. Worse yet, a note was sent home with you to your parents, where you got at least one more swat. According to today's' beliefs, it's a wonder we all didn't turn to be psychopathic axe murders.

Antibiotic wonder drugs consisted of penicillin - period. Despite it's remarkable germ killing abilities, it was still quite impure and many people were highly allergic to it.

Cigarettes were good for you. Just ask all the Dr.s who recommended them!

We got our first can of soda when I was 7 or 8, and it blew grape soda all over the ceiling of the kitchen when my dad opened it.

Gas was $.17 but got down to $.13 during "gas wars". Coke was $.05 and was something you drank, not snorted. The most expensive candy bars were $.05 but about the time I turned 10 or 12 inflation hit and drove some of them up to a dime.

Yeah, I could go on, but you get the idea.

[pixelsaurus]

Television had thirteen channels, but only three stations: CBS, NBC and ABC.

Luxury! Growing up in NZ during the 50's, there was no TV. When it was introduced in the early 60's, there was only one channel; it was B/W and transmision didn't start until 6pm unless NZ was playing test cricket at home. When Apollo 11 landed, we had to wait for the RNZAF to fly the video tapes from Oz before we could watch it. Americans sure had it easy.

[Manel Brand]

We didn't even have Atari systems to play with.

C'mon not even one of these?

You Tube

You Tube

[JeffJS]

C'mon not even one of these?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZYuGUCrkoU

Given that the latest computer tech at the time was probably punch cards, probably not.

That would have lasted about 10 seconds in our house before mom would have thrown it out on the driveway and then run it over. I didn't make it 30 seconds into the video.

Our first television (that I remember) was a 12" or so black and white. Complete with remote control. JEFF! Turn the channel. JEFF! Turn up the volume. JEFF! Change the channel again. 2, 4, 7, 9, and 50 was it (CBS, NBC, ABC, CBC, and whatever 50 was at the time). Move the antenna.. Star Spangled Banner after Johnny Carson to 'sign off'. Then the beautiful test pattern. Shut the TV off and wait for the Dot to disappear. The first Color one was a 300 pound console but the remote control was the same. The picture crapped out on the 12" and the sound went on the console. JEFF! Change the channels (on Both). Yup... Those were the days ..