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, drudging through snow up to my hips....
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 something over forty,
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!
1) 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!!
2) 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!
3) 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!
4) 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!
5) 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?
6) 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!
7) 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 GOSH !!!
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.
8) 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!
9) 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!
10) 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?!?!
11) 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!
12) And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something
up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!
13) 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 1970 or any time before!
This has been floating around the internet for years.
The mature generation complaining about the younger generation is nothing new. Examples can be found all the way back to ancient times (maybe chiseled onto stone tablets).
I enjoyed every paragraph..... thanks!
as someone born in 1969, I love this one! always makes me smile.
11) 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!
A 66 baby here and yes, I agree, it's a good one.
Ditto that. I'm a '67 sorta guy.
This strikes a tender chord with me.
I was the proverbial 'dropout'. I quit HS in 1969 and listened to my 'elders' crappisscrypukeandmoan about how I was throwing it all away. For all I knew they may have been right, but I knew for sure that I needed to do something different.
As luck would have it, my father was a surveyor. No son of his was going to "sit around and listen to his hair grow"...I became bottom slot on the survey crew. I took to the outdoors, the challenge and the math like a fish to water. Curly was right (find that ONE thing).
41 years later I can't say that I couldn't have gotten here via an easier route but I'm very happy with my journey. My experience in my youth was more valuable to me than any degree could have been.
My parents were both 'farm folks' so I listened to all the 'uphill bothways in the snow' stories. And as a youngster I thought they were BS. Today, I feel the same way about the younger generation....but..just like the rest of us, they don't have any control over their environment. But just like all the generations before us, the cream rises to the top.
There are plenty of good, young, healthy and willing people out there amid the 'human debris'. Just give them a chance, you'll find them.
Our future lies in mysterious places. Just like the forgotten corners we search out, you have to look and have faith. There's no doubt in my mind that somewhere there is a snot nosed smartass with pierced tats all over....that will best us in all our surveying. Give him the time.
I don’t know where you guys grew up, but in eastern Iowa, we didn’t have to wait until Saturday for cartoons. We had Marshall J until he moved to San Francisco and then Dr. Max and Mombo.
[flash width=425 height=344] http://www.youtube.com/v/9dxeWeRpFCk [/flash]
Yeah, right, they have it real easy...
- We had jobs.
- The planet wasn't heating up.
- The economy wasn't in the toilet.
- We didn't have AIDS.
- Gas was $0.39.
- We only had one idiotic war going on.
Yep, they have it too easy....
"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on
frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond
words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and
respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly wise
[disrespectful] and impatient of restraint" (Hesiod, 8th century BC).
From #9:
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!
LOVE IT!
Remember the weekly movies like "Gunsmoke"? You knew things were not good when there was only 10 minutes left in the hour and the plot wasn't even close to finishing up. Then the dreaded "To be Continued Next Week" came on the screen. Oh the agony of it all!
Although I never saw Dr. Max and Mombo, I was privileged to meet Mombo's off-camera persona Fred Petrick, who attended the same church as my wife at the time I met her. He was a really nice guy who couldn't stop performing for kids even without his makeup.
And in south-central Iowa, we could get WHO TV from Des Moines with a good antenna. If the afternoon school bus was on time we could watch The Floppy Show every weekday, where the host and his dog puppet Floppy carried on between cartoons. He became an entertainment legend for two generations of central Iowans, broadcast remote from the state fair, and made appearances at town celebrations.
I'm failing to recall the name of the "Cowboy" who ran that show before Floppy came along. I remember seeing him at my grandparents before we got a TV.
Yes, kids, there are people around who remember that far back.
#14) A camera used F I L M...and you had to send this said 'FILM' to be DEVELOPED..it could take days before you ever saw a picture...and at the time you took the picture you had no idea if it was good or bad...
aint it the truth-
as a young lad i spent the 1st-3rd grades in gordon, pa--walking over 2 miles down a dirt road to go to school daily, there were cows, bulls, foxes, opossums and mean wild dogs, the snow was deep above my waist at times--the neighbors kids would come by my house and gather me up and we would all head to school-
then we moved to nyc as my dad left coal mining for a nyc job--we moved to a nice brownstone on hunts point ave--there in 3rd grade i still had about a 6 block walk and quickly learned i had to fight for the right to walk to school, to eat a candy bar, to sit on my own stoop-
we then moved to bronx park south next to the zoo, went to p.s.6, there to i had to fight almost daily where i learned to use weapons like knives and bottles-
we then moved to webster ave and 234 st in the north bronx, where i attended 6,7,8, grade at p.s.48, again , there i had to fight almost daily for my lunch, to keep my clothes, sneakers, books etc-there i learned the power of a stick ball bat and the power of being a gang member--we were an all white neighborhood of irish, german , italian and other european mixes--the school yard was a war zone, the streets on the way to and from school was a war zone, we were beaten up, robbed and harassed daily--i dreaded the end of the school day wondering who i had to fight,in the sixth grade i was attacked by a kid with a knife who wanted my jacket he cut my arm open, i froze in shock to see blood gushing out of my arm--in a few moments i became furious lunged at the larger kid he was trying to stab me several times, my jacket protected me i grabbed his knife and stabbed him in the gut many times--i was exhausted from stabbing him--word got out about the fight and my life was easier for some time till the 8th grade when my gang was challenged by another gang, we had a large gang war over 400 kids with bats, knives, chains, bottles, zip guns, razors we met up in van cortlandt park about 200 kids from 8 or 9 yrs old to 16 or so, we charged each other like a civil war battle screaming yelling and wielding our weapons, the sound of zipo guns going off the wounded boys screaming in pain, others chasing off the losers that diodn't hold their ground--we bandaged each other up and thought of lies to tell our parents of how we got hurt, a couple died from wounds that day in 1959.
then i graduated and went to a junior high on mosholu parkway around 168th st, had to take 2 buses, that was you guessed it, more fighting, just to get on a bus -to get a seat on the bus and hold on to your lunch or lunch money--in the first month i got attacked by 5-6 older kids wanting my leather jacket who smashed my face in pretty well- i had to get stitches and it took forever to heal, the school bullies known as "the mafia" mostly italian kids, ruled the hood--i stayed low key for a few months waiting to heal, met a new kid billy was his name a large irish kid, few messed with him as he pounded a mafia member out for stealing his lunch-- one morning i got off the bus and saw the 2 biggest kids, they were like 6 ft tall about 16-17 and still in the 9th grade, not big on brain power, i was afraid they would see me and renew our acquaintance- they went in a candy store and i passed buy, i got about 50 ft in front of the store and saw a broken broom handle--my brain went to overload, i grabbed the broom handle and hunkered down in the ally till they walked by i came from behind and tee'd off on the biggest guy, i must have hit him 50 times the other one ran away- just then billy showed up and saved me from retaliation. from that day forward i never had any more problem again--then there was high school -de witt clinton-over 4000 boys and 30-40 gangs but thats another story for another time--tdd
A hot shutter button operator might get 100 photos on a 2 week vacation.
Now we get 100 photos per hour 🙂
There's good news and bad news...
regarding digital cameras:
The good news is you can take as many pictures as you want.
The bad news is you can take as many pictures as you want.
Well, for what it’s worth, I’m 59 with two sons aged 40 and 38, and a 26 year old daughter. And still married to my only wife for 42 years. :-O
I still watch “Foghorn Leghorn”, “Daffy Duck” and “Yosemite Sam” on youtube!
Go figure?
Have a great weekend !
>If the afternoon school bus was on time we could watch The Floppy Show every weekday, where the host and his dog puppet Floppy carried on between cartoons. He became an entertainment legend for two generations of central Iowans.
I used to watch Floppy - lots of Tom & Jerry cartoons. My younger brother was part of a studio audience for the Floppy show back around 1980 or so. We also saw Floppy at the fair a couple times.
Ted..
I learned to fight not far from your house, in Buena Vista, in the early sixties.
I was one of three 'anglos' in a class of 35 kids. The teacher was Mrs. Martinez.
If you were hispanic, your daddy worked at the molybdenum mine in Climax. If you were anglo, your daddy was a boss at the mine. I got my butt whipped every day for being toe headed.
Then Frank (the tank) Zampedri saw me talkin' to his little sister after school. That was the first time I every had a knife pulled on me.
Ahhhh...fond memories.
