Classic note to the kids, from the 30+ crews

Wagner · #1 03-26-2010, 08:10 PM

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 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! 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 ass! Nowhere was safe!

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!

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?

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!

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 GOD !!! 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.

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!

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!

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?!?!

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-finks!

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

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 1980 or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

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cmyX6go · #2 03-26-2010, 08:22 PM

It's amazing we're still alive. Car seats?!?!??! My grandmother (God rest her soul) had pots in the boxes the hospital sent us home in. YES....The hospital put you in a box and wrote your name, birth date, and weight on the box and that's how you came home from the hospital.

And you didn't dare come home and say you got in trouble in school. 'Cause you'd get your ass kicked big time. LITERALLY. I remember playing dead figuring if dad thought I was dead, he'd stop hitting me (I did deserve that beating).

Bugs Bunny Road Runner hour rocked.

motordavid · #3 03-26-2010, 09:54 PM

Big R,
Rack It! A Fookin Classic!

That is really how it was...
Best Regards, from the Over 60 Crowd.

Yii · #4 03-26-2010, 10:03 PM

Defiantly give you guys major respecting living through those times, but if you had asian parents or parents that just moved in to the US from another country your most likely still getting beat. When i was little and did something bad my parents would take wire close hanger apart and decide to hit me with that till they felt satisfied =[ its the norm i suppose.

FSETH · #5 03-26-2010, 11:53 PM

Wags, I am 31 and the funny thing is that none of the sh!t you listed matters worth a damn. Being a kid was awesome period. It doesn't matter what technology was or what you had. It was playing with your friends, playing the best video games the times had to offer, not caring about a thing in the world or wasting time like we do today on this freaking forum. If I wanted to talk to a friend I would call them or do it in person, not send an impersonal e-mail or text. Some of my best days in today's world are the ones where I turn my phone off completely and don't check e-mails.

I wouldn't trade growing up in the 80's and 90's for anything. It really wasn't that hard for people our age, imo. I actually feel sorry for kids these days compared to the way we had it. Everything these days is on demand and instant gratification and that takes away from how special certiant things can be, imo.

Quicksilver · #6 03-27-2010, 12:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wagner

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 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!

As the years pass it seems like every generation gets to update the "born before 1945" classic. Needless to say I'm still in stitches......

In the words of MBFAM Thanks Ryan and best regards from the almost 70 crowd.

CarsRmyVICE · #7 03-27-2010, 12:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FSETH

Wags, I am 31 and the funny thing is that none of the sh!t you listed matters worth a damn. Being a kid was awesome period. It doesn't matter what technology was or what you had. It was playing with your friends, playing the best video games the times had to offer, not caring about a thing in the world or wasting time like we do today on this freaking forum. If I wanted to talk to a friend I would call them or do it in person, not send an impersonal e-mail or text. Some of my best days in today's world are the ones where I turn my phone off completely and don't check e-mails.

I wouldn't trade growing up in the 80's and 90's for anything. It really wasn't that hard for people our age, imo. I actually feel sorry for kids these days compared to the way we had it. Everything these days is on demand and instant gratification and that takes away from how special certiant things can be, imo.

I am only 22 so I guess I am one of the kids mentioned in the post, which was entertaining. I have to agree with FSETH tho. Technology doesn't always make life better... just different. Information overload! I am so sick of texting girls instead of talking in person... I could just toss my droid off a cliff! And I still get down with my original nintendo! I know that doesn't have much on you atari boys.

X Foomph · #8 03-27-2010, 03:34 AM

Very well put together and oh, so true. You took me back for a fleeting moment as I fondly remembered most of what you mentioned.

If I could add a few other memories from the 'good ol' days' they would be;
Tinkering in the back of the garage or back yard shed with all sorts of odds and ends that you could beg, borrow or steal and then roaring down the steepest hill in the neighbourhood in a, god help us, a home made billy cart. Their was usually room for your best mate, with bit of a squeeze. Brakes? what brakes? I remember using a staunch bit of hardwood on a lever for brakes.

Walking. Man I must of walked miles and miles when I was a young teenager. If you wanted to go over to Johny's house on Saturday afternoon, yeah, you could go but you'd have to walk the 10 miles or whatever the hell distance it was. Of course you walked all the way back home again, that was a given. There was no "I'll just drop you off, call me when you to be picked up".

Take away?? What the hell was that? Nearly all eating was done from mum's cooking, if it wasn't, it was your mates mum's cooking. Yum.

True, there was no Cartoon Network, but there was after school tv (after you'd done your homework & chores) like Superman, Mr Ed, Beverly H'billies, Phantom Agents and the like. Bring em back, I say.

Others that come to mind are spending weekends away whilst in the Boy Scouts, going for a Sunday drive with the whole family (+ gran) and as Wagner mentioned, doing chores, whether I wanted to or not.

Families seemed to have been a tighter unit back then, which is good, no?

Regards,
Foomph. From the just over the 50 crowd.

Juanted · #9 03-27-2010, 08:03 AM

Ahhhh... those were the days.

I'd come home from school, do my homework, and my parents would KICK ME OUT OF THE HOUSE! Yes, go outside, play with your friends. Be home for dinner. (Yes, that's right... I would be out of my parents' sight for a few hours every day, and the worse that happened was my occasionally coming home with a scraped knee.)

And if you came home saying your teacher had slapped your hand (I went to catholic schools), your parents wouldn't call the principal or DSS to complain; they would say, "I'm sure you deserved it."

You know what? I survived. And I'm glad I was raised the way I was. But I'd be in jail if I pulled half the shit my parents pulled on me... <SIGH>

Juan

Thunder22 · #10 03-27-2010, 09:47 AM

A couple of other things:

- No GPS, we had to use a map.

- I walked to/from school from the time I was in the 2nd grade until I got my license, over 1.5 miles each way, and it's notable not because of difficulty, but because of the distance, most parents don't let their kids walk 10 feet anymore.

- I actually miss the "page me" and finding a phone booth process

- stealing music was making a couple of tapes of an album for your friends, which you really didn't need to do anyway because you were always together with your tapes lol

- You knew all of the store owners in town and they knew you and your parents, because Wally World, Target, Sports Authority, Costco and Amazon didn't exist.

- Reading 3 newspapers a day just for the sports sections

On the flip side, technology is a good thing, without it we all probably wouldn't know one another.

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