Jesus Christ, I AM getting old... — Forum Archive

14 Nov 2005, 10:47

I'm sure most of you have seen something like this before, hell, if I'm getting it in an e-mail, I'm sure somebody may have even posted this here. But as Shuggy says, you know what my memory is like! So 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; like walking twenty-five miles to school every morning..... uphill BOTH ways....through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs....to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time, after-school job at the local textile mill....where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of BS 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! Compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia. I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it.

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 a week to get there.

There were no MP3s or Napsters. If you wanted to steal music, you had to go 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'd usually talk over the beginning and screwed it all up!

We didn't even have Call Waiting. If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal. We didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either. When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was. It could be your boss, your mom, a collections agent, your drug dealer, you didn't know. You just had to pick it up and take your chances.

We didn't have any 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 were horrible. Your guy was a little square. (You had to use your imagination) There were no multiple levels or screens; it was just one screen forever. You could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died....Just like LIFE.

When you went to the movie theater there was no such thing as stadium seating. All the seats were the same height. If a tall guy sat in front of you and you couldn't see you were screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20

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. Channel surfing involved you getting off your ass and walking over to the TV to change the channel. There was no Cartoon Network. You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning...Do ya hear what I'm saying! We had to wait ALL WEEK....you spoiled little bastards!

We didn't have microwaves; if we wanted to heat something up....we had to use the stove. If we wanted popcorn....we had to use that stupid jiffy pop and shake it over the stove like some guy with Parkinson's disease.

You kids today have got it too easy. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in the 1980's!

14 Nov 2005, 11:02

When I was a kid, I had to walk. Walk to everything. School, volleyball, friends etc.

Now the kids get a ride everywere.

When I was a kid, I had to save money to buy sweets on Suterday. Now the kids get it from there parents everyday.

When I was a kid, we had child programs on the telly 15 minutes everyday.

Now they have 8 channels 7/24 with that shit.

When I was a kid, we respected older people.

Now the kids rob and kick the ass out of older people.

When I was a kid, we drunk beer.

Now they do acid....

14 Nov 2005, 12:11

The art of writing letters is dead, so kids are making many spell errors, just like me, hehehe
I remember, I used to stay all night by the radio and try to tape some music - record, stop, record again.... its funny today
I had only 2 tv channels, sponsored by Russian Communist of course.

Finaly, I dont think getting all that modern gadgets and other stupid devices kids are in better shape than we was in 80'. I would have some hard disc instead my brian if I used all that suff everyday. Dont you worry its not that bad.

with my best fookin digital regards, hie hie hie

14 Nov 2005, 12:30

Ah, the time I used to wake up early on sunday to tape the damned top 30 so I could have an updated tape of the damned tunes.

Now I load a software, download the damned tracks and put them on my iPod :p Don't even need to listen to radio anymore, just download the tracks and delete those you can't stand (mostly hip-hop and r&b)

Jeff, I also remember it was WAY MUCH HARDER to get PORN then :evil4:

:p

14 Nov 2005, 13:14

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike everywhere. Now I walk everywhere. Uphill, BOTH WAYS. Through a blizzard. In July. I didn't know how easy I had it.

14 Nov 2005, 16:17

I used to walk to school and shovel coal just for fun. :evil4:

I was the one who did those things. How'd did you ever think they got done?

Jeff, no fookin' microwave? Shit I just turned 40 and we had a home nuke since the early 80s.

But for the spoiled bastards today...A CELLPHONE IS NOT A TOY. PUT THE FUCKER AWAY BEFORE I SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!!![/b]

14 Nov 2005, 18:23

I was a kid in the late '80s, early '90s, but it might have been the '80s. We had no cable, no computer, no microwave, and a b&w TV until 1991. If you wanted to see cartoons in color, you had to go to a matinee at the movie theater. We didn't play video games; in fact, we played outside. Of course, we got hurt, but that's supposed to happen. There were no such things as cell phones. In fact, if you wanted to call home, you had to look for a payphone and hope you had 25 cents. There were no such things as remote controls. If you wanted to change the TV, you had to get up; if you wanted to change the music, you had to also get up and possibly flip a tape over. For school, you had to write all of your reports by hand and if you made a mistake, you either wrote the page over again or used correction tape. When there were computers in school, they all had black screens and neon letters. A floppy disk was rather large and really floppy. Music came in tapes or CDs. If you wanted to listen to a new song, you asked a friend to tape it for you, or you waited for it to come on the radio.

15 Nov 2005, 00:15

Aww no. The 'It was so much better and harder in my day' thread. :evil4:

'You know son, in my day we had no such things as cars. We had to get carridges to school, and we didn't have any paper, we had to write on the back of a shovel. You lot don't know you're living.'

This blue-eyed boy that wants to be: that's a really scary avater. :eek3:

15 Nov 2005, 03:55

When I was a lad,we used to live in a shoebox in the middle of the road.

15 Nov 2005, 04:20

twist wrote: I used to walk to school and shovel coal just for fun.

I was the one who did those things. How'd did you ever think they got done?

Jeff, no fookin' microwave? Shit I just turned 40 and we had a home nuke since the early 80s.

But for the spoiled bastards today...A CELLPHONE IS NOT A TOY. PUT THE FUCKER AWAY BEFORE I SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!!![/b]

I would add;

A CELLPHONE IS NOT A PUBLIC BROADCASTING DEVICE. PUT THE FUCKER AWAY BEFORE I SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS!!![/

Also, like Spotty I was a religious taper of the weekly top 40... although being a teen in the 80's was great; The music was excellent and we grew up as computers grew up; ZX80 aged 10, ZX Spectrum aged 14 (ish), Amiga aged 19, PC sometime later... and the Net in my mid 20's....

15 Nov 2005, 08:05

This is my kind of thread.

Yeah, the thing that I most envy about 'young people today' is how much more accessible music is. When I were a nipper you could only listen to what you could afford to buy, which wasn't much. That or tape John Peel's show. At least I had an older mate with implausible amounts of money and hence records I could tape. But there was so much good stuff around then that I was aware of but never got to hear till years later (Gang of Four being a case in point). Nowadays kids can actually find the good stuff, not have to force themselves to like something they really know isn't much cop just cost they spent what little cash they had on it.

On the plus side, when I were a lad people weren't regarded as weirdo freaks if they didn't have a car (my parents never did), and kids like me actually walked to school and back (even ran on occasion), so at least I'm less likely to end up fat and diabetic than todays couch potato generation.

And what is this obsession with sending bleedin' text messages about nothing every 5 minutes?

15 Nov 2005, 11:21

404 error wrote: This is my kind of thread.

On the plus side, when I were a lad people weren't regarded as weirdo freaks if they didn't have a car (my parents never did), and kids like me actually walked to school and back (even ran on occasion), so at least I'm less likely to end up fat and diabetic than todays couch potato generation.

I think today that can vary depending upon where you're from and your economic background. When I'm back home in Philadelphia, most people my age - early twenties - do not have a car or a licence. It's no big deal. You just take SEPTA everywhere or walk. However, when I'm up at school in Boston, at a school which filled mostly with upper-middle class white kids from the suburbs, they can't imagine someone in their early 20's not having a car, like it's some kind of necessity.

15 Nov 2005, 13:06

This blue-eyed boy that wants to be wrote: You just take SEPTA everywhere or walk.

Philly public officials really have no sense of irony, do they?

15 Nov 2005, 13:52

:confused2:

15 Nov 2005, 18:50

Comrade Shampanyov wrote:

This blue-eyed boy that wants to be wrote: You just take SEPTA everywhere or walk.

Philly public officials really have no sense of irony, do they?

Nope, they don't, especially with the SEPTA strike going on. Luckily, I'm not there. My parents do own a car but they rarely use it. But, now with this strike, they have to use it, unless their destinations are accessible by commuter rail - for some reason that isn't on strike.

16 Nov 2005, 04:49

monty wrote: When I was a lad,we used to live in a shoebox in the middle of the road.

What? I used to DREAM about living in a shoebox in the middle of the road. I used to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of damp gravel, work a twenty hour day at the mill for tuppence a month, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us with a broken bottle, if we were lucky.

:brow:

17 Nov 2005, 15:25

Missy Jem wrote:

monty wrote: When I was a lad,we used to live in a shoebox in the middle of the road.

What? I used to DREAM about living in a shoebox in the middle of the road. I used to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of damp gravel, work a twenty hour day at the mill for tuppence a month, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us with a broken bottle, if we were lucky.

And you tell that to the kids of today....they'd never believe you! :laugh: