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
... 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
tie plant ... 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 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 .....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 MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go
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 mess it all up!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You
had to 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! 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 boss, your mom, a collections agent, your drug dealer,
you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take your chances,
mister!
We didn't have any fancy Sony Play station videogames with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like
"Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a
little square! You 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 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! If a tall guy 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 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! You were
screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your butt and
walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon
Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning ...
D'ya hear what I'm saying!?!
We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little brats!
We didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up ... we had
to use the stove ... imagine that! If we wanted popcorn .. we had to use
that stupid jiffy pop and shake it over the stove like an idiot forever.
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!.....
diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with
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
tie plant ... 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 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 .....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 MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go
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 mess it all up!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You
had to 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! 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 boss, your mom, a collections agent, your drug dealer,
you didn't know!!! You just had to pick it up and take your chances,
mister!
We didn't have any fancy Sony Play station videogames with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like
"Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked! Your guy was a
little square! You 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 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! If a tall guy 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 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! You were
screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your butt and
walk over to the TV to change the channel and there was no Cartoon
Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning ...
D'ya hear what I'm saying!?!
We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little brats!
We didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up ... we had
to use the stove ... imagine that! If we wanted popcorn .. we had to use
that stupid jiffy pop and shake it over the stove like an idiot forever.
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!.....
