Thought we'd never sound like our parents?

[Mavin1]

If you are 30, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

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 bastards!

And not many of us had 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 and seat belts - 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

 

[LaurieJim]

How true, dont think some of these peeps under 30 would have made it back in the day, those were the good ole days huh? I miss so many things, like drive in movies, pepsi's in a glass bottle and just enjoying those simple things that existed back then.

Laurie

 

[Webzcas]

We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'.

We had this, absolutely fantastic console. I think my dad still has it, somewhere in his house.

I loved growing up during the advent of personal computers. Kids today don't know what they are missing out on. Going from the ZX81, to the Spectrum, then the Amiga and finally onto a 386 Powered PC.

 

[ksech]

We weren't allowed to use calculators on an exam (we had to show all the steps on paper) and now they are mandatory for the Regents. Seond through sixth grade, we had to walk to school, no busing, and yes! It was uphill both ways. And imagine, we all got to school on time and parents didn't drive us unless there was 3-4 feet of snow (and they didn't cancel school for a mere 5-6 INCHES of snow.)

We had Keds, no Nikes, Adidas, Sketchers, etc.
We also wore rubbers (NOT condoms) over our shoes on rainy days...black for boys and red for girls.
We didn't have all the cool snow boots either, we wore these stiff rubber boots that went over the shoes. (The boys had galoshes with the metal fasteners)
Snow pants, none of these nice, slimming thin snow pants they have now.
Remember the dummy mittens? (Both mittens were attached to a string which went through the sleeves of your jacket.
We didn't have HDTV or watch movies in 3D, we had black and white tv, 3 channels if you were lucky.

During the summer we spent ALL day outside unless it was thunder and lightening, then you did inside chores cause you made mom angry.
We had record players and when I was a teenager we had 8-track tapes.

We could go to the movies on Saturday afternoon for a quarter and buy a small soda and popcorn for an additional .15.
School lunches were .25, white milk was .03 , chocolate milk was .05 and ice cream was a nickel.
A pack of cigarettes cost .35 (cigarettes are now about $10/pack where I live, $9 if you smoke the generics)

We made go-carts out of our rollers skates (don't know how we all survived as we never once considered how we were going to stop when we got to the bottom of the hill - no brakes were ever installed), the roller skates you used a key to adjust. We didn't have the fancy sleds they have today, we had metal saucers and runner sleds (mom was always missing her new bars of soap).

And clothes, we didn't have all the designer clothes kids have today. If there were 4-5 kids in the family you wore hand-me-downs. And then you traded the clothes with families who had kids bigger than you.

Going to a burger joint was a big deal, and the prizes were SO much better. Anyone still have the Looney Tunes glasses Carrols gave out? Thirty-nine cent Club Burgers...

Mary Poppins came out when I was 4 and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was the top movie when I was 9.

And imagine! People actually talked face to face, no texting, no cell phones, no computers.

We watched Art Linkletter and Kids, The Mickey Mouse club with Annette and Cubby, Lassie and The Wonderful world of Disney, Captain Kangeroo with Mr. greenjeans, bunny rabbit and Mr. Moose. For cartoons we had UnderDog, Mighty Mouse and Donald Duck.

How about those great candies! Atomic fireballs, wax lips and teeth, Adams Sour apple and sour cherry gum. teaberry gum and BlackJack gum. (Although some of these are making a comeback now...

 

[Jasminebed]

I think it's when you become a parent that you first really hear your parents coming out of your mouth, and some of these are every bit as applicable today.

I swore I'd never say to my kid:

"Because I said so"

"My house, my rules"

"When you have your own house you can have the best chair"

"When you buy the groceries you can have whatever cereal you want"


I remember as a little girl, my brother and I would have the duty on Friday nights of holding onto the rabbit ears to get Friday Night Fights, a channel that did not come in well.

Some of my chores, such as ironing towels are well abandoned IMO.

 

[Mavin1]

My earlier years were spent mostly out in the desert, that was a great time. We used to go out exploring daily, when not in school, we'd even take a sack lunch with us. Our first stop was in our neighbors barn, to get some rock salt, then off we'd go, as we lived on the deserts edge.

We almost fell of cliffs, went down rockslides, got stuck with the jumping cactus and ran from snakes. We'd catch horny toads and lizards, the poor lizards always lost their tails to us, because that was entertainment, watching the tail wriggle around without the lizard attached. I know, yuck!

Christmas was limited to 4 gifts a piece, mine usually consisted of a coloring book, box of crayons, set of jacks and a small cheap doll. We all would go downtown for the company's holiday event. They had wooden bins filled with apples, oranges, nuts and hard candy, the people would line up with their sacks and file past the bins, being giving a bit of each.

Halloween was really fun, we would take a pillow case, none of this little plastic pumpkin stuff, we wanted serious amounts of loot and always got it. Our pillow cases would be so full, we would be dragging them from house to house and then home. The people passing out the candy would chuckle at our big bags and say, weren't you here before?

The only electronics we had were an old broken radio, I used to love to take them apart, the tubes in them were like the prize inside.

Ah, what fun it was to be a kid before things became so technical.

 

[kauphy]

i,m so with all of you lol.

my kids asked me one time what a vinyl record and an 8 track was.

mavin1 i too lived in the middle of no where.

i reamber my brother and i use to pack up eggs and things like that and go out into the desert and start a little campfire and make r breakfast.

also from the time i was 6 years old we would take fishing poles and put copper wire at the eye at the very end and make a silp knot with this we would go lizard and snake hunting. you would put the silp knot over their heads and then pull and it would tighten and then you could gabe them and take them off.

i had lots of lizards for pets and a few gopher snakes and glossies.

we would sell the snakes and lizard to a men who would then take them or get their vinom and sell it to the hospital. we made good money lol.

one time we had two mountain horny toads we were chasing and they went into a big bush and my brother and dad and me were in the bush on r hands and kness looking for them.

next thing you know i was scearming and grabing at my head.

the two little evil toads jumped on my head and sceared the hell out of me seeing at the time i was maybe 7 or 8 but we got them and they were so pertty.

i try to pass some of this on to my kids but seeing we live in town its hard but we do take the 2 little ones out in the desert and spen all day just seeing what we can find.