This email or things like it go around about once every 3-5 years. This one is entertaining because it talks about how easy things are today by comparing it to about 20-25 years ago. To be honest; things weren’t that miserable 30 years ago either. They were different; but I’d still take the creature conveniences of 30 years ago over the lack of conveniences of say… 90 years ago.
So… this is a fun walk down amnesia lane for the 30+ crowd. (I know some of you have already seen it via email and blog)
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 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 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 . 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 like a week to get there!
There were no MP3’s or Napsters! You wanted to
steal music, you had to hitchhike 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 @#*% it all up!
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 Boxes 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!
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 or some old broad with a hat 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 15 channels
and there was no on screen 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 ass and walk over to the TV to change the
channel and 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!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat
something up we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire .. imagine that!
If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing
and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.
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!
Regards,
The over 30 Crowd
« Well, we knew it was going to be ugly Before I pack it in for the night… »
Hah. I feel old now!
But I was told over the weekend that I don’t look like I’m in my 30’s so I will take comfort in that and carry on.
Nice location, btw. I often write LJ entries from bed 🙂
Innit interesting how with a turn of thought we can turn something we experienced with pleasure into a complaint…? *grin*
of course, mine is the “30 years ago” list… you’re just a kiddie…
– see you soon!
Actually………….
We had a microwave in our house in 1984.
When I was a kid lots of people had Compuserve accounts, complete with BBS systems that were an awful lot like Internet.
And you’re missing the real generation gap: cell phones. I trade stocks over Internet (I know, I know), but kids today handle all their financial transactions by phone. Meaning, by wireless Internet. WIP. You get the idea.
yeah, this list actually is a bit of a mash-up of 70’s and 80’s… and it’s totally not the list I’d make 😀
Here’s where I date myself
Indeed. I’m too young to remember most of the 1970s (although I do remember disco music and Saturday Morning Cartoons). My childhood and teen years were the 1980s. My young adulthood was the 1990s. I’m still amazed by how seemless a transition we are making from such things as robots and cell phones being futuristic gleaming metal movie props, to their being an integral, assumed part of our culture.
Re: Here’s where I date myself
My father was a doctor when I was growing up.
So I remember him being a gadget nut even when I was about 6.
We had an Odyssey Video Game system which basically put single pixels on the screen in white. You have static cling transparent overlays that you ordered to the size of your TV. The actual cartridges looked more like oversized Ram sticks.
We also had an answering machine. It was about the size of stereo tuner. It had one red button (about 1/4 inch) that you had to hold in. One of those blister causing buttons.
But the device I remember most fondly. It gave my father unending nightmares. A dual deck Betamax. This thing could tape two shows at once; could tape from one tape to another. It was effectively a video editing deck dumbed down for the public.
I also was on BBS’es by 1980. I got my Apple ][ in 1979 and my modem towards the end of that year.
So… the email is entertaining. I’d actually love to see what the difference between being a pre teen in 1980 is from being a pre-teen in 1970.
A few years makes a big difference Re: Here’s where I date myself
well I was 10 in 1970.
No video games of any sort what so ever. No bbs’s or home computers.
Around 1974 or so my mother who was working on her PhD borrowed a calculator from UC Berkeley that could do some statistics and it was a big plug in thing. I took a computer programming class in school that year, and we had to go to the Lawrence Hall of Science (part of UCB) to use teletypes connected to a mainframe.
But otoh, by 1978 I was in a chatroom that connected all the csuc (california state unis and colleges) campuses, and one of the people I talked to there was a highschool kid in San Diego who had his own TRS-80 in his room. Sort of like IRC if it only had one channel and a maximum of 14 users at any one time.
That bit was actually written by a guy named Ernie Cline. I guess someone snagged it without giving credit. See #3, “when I was a kid” here.
He’s got some great stuff out.
Jiffy Pop! You actually used that stuff?
We put cooking oil and loose popcorn kernels in a dutch oven and shook until the explosions stopped.
and I always burned the pan.
Us too us too!
Aah, finally catching up on some posts this week & this one delighted me. fun.
yep.
Actually, Gen-Xers did have microwaves.
We also were allowed to play outside, did not have our parents breathing down our neck 24/7/365, and we were not under constant surveillance. We were actually allowed to have recess and eat candy without getting in trouble. We actually were allowed to -gasp- eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, someone else’s allergies be damned!
I preferred peanut butter and honey, m’self.
Still do. Yummmmmmmmy!
*snerk*
We had a microwave. I have fond memories of microwaving jumbo marshmallows and watching them expand to improbable size (and then flatten as soon as the microwave stopped.) I went a little too far the day I decided to microwave a pyramid of jumbo marshmallows. I ended up frantically scrubbing marshmallow cement out of the oven before my mom woke up.
I do remember jiffy pop. That shit was awful, but it was better than the first wave of microwave popcorn.
We did that too! (The marshmallows, I mean) and also with peeps. or maybe I should say *especially* with peeps.
Did you know that peeps can joust?
Here’s what you do . . . take two peeps. Give each a sword (toothpick). Have them face off in the microwave. A clear winner will eventually emerge.
*happy dance*
ROFL!
You didn’t even tap into cell phones or digital clocks!
Oooh other additions…
Console TVs that you built yourself, 8 track tapes, records, huffy bikes with the big banana seats (no mini crotch rockets for us!), using those pain in the ass typewriters with the extra pieces of correction tape to cover up your mistakes, and no SPELL CHECK! We had to look shit up in the dictionary!
Don’t shoot the messenger, but the icon in this post of yours looks like Sean Knight. btw, the pics of your son are absolutely adorable.
No worries
Around ’95 our driver’s license photos looked so similar people thought we actually might be brothers. So.. resemblance is understood and expected.
Granted.. I’m wearing a ‘piece’ in the photo. I’m pretty sure… he didn’t/doesn’t 😉
I love it! I’ve posted this on my blog too now. Thanks! 😀
Here’s one for you, thanks to technology. I work in a pharmacy that has ‘satellite’ pharmacies in small, distant, remote towns in Eastern Washington that are too far in the boondocks to have their own doctors, much less a pharmacy. In some of these towns, you would have to drive upwards of 100 miles to get a prescription for a simple antibiotic. The solution? Robots that can dispense the medication with a single on-site technician to hand the meds over to the patient.
A kid from 30 years ago would have said: I grew up in a town so small, we had to drive 100 miles to get to a pharmacy. You kids have it so easy!
A kid from today, in 30 years, will say: I grew up in a town so small, we had a robot dispense our medicines. You kids have it so easy!
Technology.