When I was your age...

OttoNP · Addict Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 848 City: MI

Something I got from someone today...

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 blizards 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
textile mill 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've reached the ripe old age of twenty-nine,
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 goddamned library and look it up ourselves!

And there was no email! We had to actually write
somebody a letter -- with a pen! --and 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!

And 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 we had to wait around all
day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually talk
over the beginning and f@#* 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 stuff 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!

And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation
videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had
the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and
"Asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass! 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! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were
screwed!

And sure, we had cable television, but back then that
was only like 20 channels and there was no onscreen
menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide
to find out what was on! 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 bastards!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today
have got it too easy. You're spoiled, I swear to God!
You guys wouldn't lasted five minutes back in 1984!!
________
N02 vaporizer

Leggester · Posted: Jan 23, 2003 8:23 am Post subject:

He, he, he. Very good Otto.

Amazing ain't it?

jvanick · Posted: Jan 23, 2003 8:29 am Post subject:

not only is that really great, but it's really true as well.

I'm 27 now, and I can still remember when I found out how to download porn off the internet. Wink

It meant no more needing to lift magazines from behind the 7-11 counters.

Here's one for ya tho:

A lot of the porn you find on the internet is WIERD stuff.

When you lifted magazines, it was normal porn, not people peeing on each other, and wierder stuff than that.

Think of how demented and twisted OUR kids are going to be when they grow up... this stuff is commonplace... heck, it even gets EMAILED to you in your in-box.

-J

Partyb · Posted: Jan 23, 2003 8:30 am Post subject:

Do not forget cell phones! If you were not at home, and you wanted to make a call, you needed use a pay phone!! Aaaa. Can you imagine. You could not access your friends at any time of the day or night. You had to call their house, and if they were not home, you could not talk to them. Crazy.

Also, nobody had TV clickers. If your dad wanted another channel on, or the volume changed, you had to get your ass up and change it for him. Sometimes you even had to watch an entire show, commercials and all. Dude, i do not know how we made it.

I will not even mention microwaves.

impulse · Addict Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 807 City: Snyder,TX

hehehe party. "watch a whole show commercials and all" oh man thats a good one. im so guilty of flipping as soon as a commercial comes on.

OttoNP · Addict Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 848 City: MI

Cell phones are a huge one. It's funny, sometimes when I think back to high school I feel like I did have a cell phone, afterall, how did we meet up? What if you messed up directions, etc... Also, I remember when calling long distance was a big deal. When I first went off to college I couldn't talk to my high school girlfriend because of long distance cost, now it's pretty much free with any cell phone and I talk to friends all over the country. Free long distance is one of the best things to happen, ever!

Nick
________
Sauteing

Chukee_R · Posted: Jan 23, 2003 1:38 pm Post subject:

Dont forget about the outhouse!!! You wanted to pee in the middle of the night, you had to crawl out of the nice warm bed, bundle up and go to this little shack in the yard without heat or electricty. My parents used that one on me too. I do laugh though when people bitch about how their internet is down, I mean come on man there is more to life than the internet. If the internet goes down go watch tv, or read a book. Sorry I had to vent on the internet thing, a friend starting bitching when his cable modem went out for a day.

bigairnut · Outlaw Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 172 City: Phoenix

Chuckee, yeah when the internet is down people freak. When this site came back up after going down for a few days there were people all over it fussing profusely over how much they missed the site and being able to communicate with their "friends" and stuff. It's funny but I get a picture in my mind of people just sitting at their computers staring a blank screen for several days just waiting...and waiting...and waiting...

Geez, quit waiting and just go play x-box on your 54" widescreen HDTV!

JD · Soul Rider Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 320 City: Bellingham

Great topic!
Remember Colecovision and Comodore 64 that was high tech when I was a kid.

bigairnut · Outlaw Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 172 City: Phoenix

Yeah remember those little handheld football games with the little red dashes for players and the offensive guy (yep, just one guy) was bright while the defensive guys were not as bright?

And in high school I actually took typing class on an old manual typewriter. We had one IBM Selectric and it was indeed a great day if one of us got to use that!

RUSSIAN · Posted: Jan 24, 2003 1:41 pm Post subject:

those football games were great. when I was in high school beepers were the big thing no one had cell phones. also we had 1 computer class in the whole school that had Apple computers that had no hard drives Shocked

Dees · Posted: Jan 24, 2003 1:58 pm Post subject:

we had DOS computer system that had 2 megs of memory. Now that was smokin machine and this always come up when you first turn the computer on'

c:\

Jam · Outlaw Joined: 14 Jan 2003 Posts: 141 City: Indy

lets not leave out wakeboards. old day water sports was a row boat!!
partyb my dad was so lazy he wouldn't tell me to turn it up change channel. he would just throw something at me and grunt!

RUSSIAN · Posted: Jan 24, 2003 2:22 pm Post subject:

also, skateboarding was'nt "cool" either, we were looked at like trash, I miss those day's

JHrod · Wakeboarder.com Freak Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 3144

uuhh Russian they didn't think u were trash because of ur skateboard Wink

j/kj/k don't hurt me

RUSSIAN · Posted: Jan 24, 2003 3:07 pm Post subject:

I'm a little confused by your post Josh

JHrod · Wakeboarder.com Freak Joined: 12 Jan 2003 Posts: 3144

just forget it Rolling Eyes

maybe a little editing will help Idea

RUSSIAN · Posted: Jan 24, 2003 3:15 pm Post subject:

uhhh

Partyb · Posted: Jan 28, 2003 7:43 am Post subject:

I remember in college, about 1988 or so, one of my rich frat bros had a cell phone. It was like a phone with cord and everything attached to this big box about the size of a shoebox. Then people only had them in cars forf a while.

MobyRick · Outlaw Joined: 13 Jan 2003 Posts: 247 City: Greer, SC

I'm so old that I remember when a digital watch was all in red LEDs and it meant that you had to push a button on the watch to see what time it was. And if you hit the square root button on a calculator it took it a few second to figure out the answer.