Monday, September 21, 2009

Under 30 = Spoiled

I had this emailed to me and I loved it. I thought that I would share. I am well into my thirties and I think this all the time!

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!

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 the world 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 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 butt! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3' s or Napsters! 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 mess 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 the tape would come undone. Cause - that's how we rolled, 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!

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 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'. 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!


You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! There was no channel surfing unless you stood two feet from the TV. You had to get off your butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!

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!!

And we didn't have microwaves; if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

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, or before!


I have to add a couple to this post:

Cell Phones: Nope. They didn't have them until the mid eighties and then they were shaped like bricks, outrageously expensive and were the icon of the wealthy. I got my first cell phone at 25 and thought that I was awesome finally sporting a phone the size of a remote control. I look at things now and have of the girls in my activity days class have one (ages 8-12.)

Popcorn was a luxury because you either had to air pop it or they had those stove top things that looked like a tin foil mushroom.

If you were lucky, your school playground had three swings, a tire swing, a jungle gym, a metal slide and gravel for their soft cushion. My kids have these awesome, multi-colored sets with slides, bridges, tunnels and monkey bars. Oh, and yes, they have wood chips or those springy mats underneath.

You tell me! What am I missing!

3 comments:

Neemie's Dad said...

The other day my oldest had a friend over who watched in amazement as I pulled a dictionary off the book shelf to look something up. Emily turned to her friend and said "Its a dictionary. Its what old people used to look things up before Google!"

- Ryan

Neemie's Dad said...

And let me just add how disappointed I was when Caller ID became standard (even though I was already technically an adult). No more middle of the night prank calls.

-Ryan

Joe and Toni said...

I liked the merry go round; though that is not a really safe park activity since someone was always flinged off at 20 mph.