If you're 30 and Older

[dollface]

If you're 30 and older

If you are 30 or older you will 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 both ways...through
year 'round blizzards . 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
heck 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 **** 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 **** library and look it up
ourselves!

There was no e-mail! 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 MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go
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'd usually talk over
the beginning and mess it all up!

You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download p**n! You
had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "H**tler" at the!
7-11! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap 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!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Play station videogames with
high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like
"Space Invaders" and "Asteroids" and the graphics sucked! 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! If a tall guy sat i! n
front of you and you couldn't see you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20
channels and there was no onscreen 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 butt and
walk over to the TV to change the channel 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 bratts!

We didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up .. we had
to use the stove . imagine that! If we wanted popcorn ... we had to
use that stupid jiffy pop and shake it over the stove like an idiot
forever.

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!

[Giny]

ROFL, thanks for the flash back! I had a great laugh reading about taping songs off the radio. Wasn't it a pain when it got messed up so you had to wait another half day for it to replay again.

I wouldn't take that time back for anything in the world. For some reason I can't help but feel that kids these days are missing out on some special things we had as kids. Seems like imagination is becoming an endangered species.

[Shadowkins]

Remember when we thought 30 was old!!! Now 60 doesn't look so bad. I also wonder if our kids will be saying the same thing about their children many moons from now.
I really enjoyed that, dollface , that was priceless.

[Mellie]

Ahh, the good old days.
I often find myself mumbling "those **** punk kids" under my breath more frequently these days.
It's all about instant gratification. And kids, unfortunately, are getting used to that. A lot of ethics (in my humble opinion) and character and respect have been lost over the course of a generation.
I don't like a lot of what I see in youth nowadays. Scares me away from having children.
Man, mentally I'm an old fuddy-duddy. And I just turned 30!

[Sheltiemama]

Hey as long as we are going there, how about a little further, we didn't have any video games we had friends and went outside to find them so we could play. We barely had TV. It would come on the air at noon and go off at 11 at night. We really had to use our imaginations and if we wanted to talk to someone we had to go to their house and talk to them personally stamps cost money and three cents is still three cents! When the phone would ring we had to listen for our own ring because it wasn't always for us, there were three other families on our four party line. Yea these kids don't know hardship LOL!!!!

[Raised By Wolves]

ROFL! Well, I'm 49, and I remember some good things which may be gone for ever!

Five cent candybars
Gas for 25 cents per gallon
No bomb threats or shootings in the schools
Mom got to stay home, unless she wanted to work
Less traffic

And, no AIDS

[CTDog]

I remember my mom yelling all the time "get outside and play!" It wasn't unusual during the summer for us to be outside from 8 a.m. to 8 pm. Now a lot of kids stay inside on their computers and they all look like pale ghosts LOL

[flyndog]

What a bunch of old farts!

[His masters voice]

I remember when .....Words had a understandable meaning: "Cool" was nearly cold, "wicked" verged on evil "Bad" did not mean good and "S__t" was a vulgar word for a bodily function and not an adjective.

Someone actually had to stand up to answer the phone. TV programs ended a 11pm and there was a white spot in the center for 2 minutes after you turned it off. Calculators were considered cheating. Digital watches had a black face and glowed up red at the push of a button. You carried your record collection around in something like a miniature suitcase, your favorite record always warped in the sun. and the record needle head had an a coin glued to it to weigh it down and stop it jumping. Vegetable availability depended on the season, bicycles did not have 20,000 gears. and nobody actually cared what make of training shoes you had on your feet.

[Jamila]

Glad Im not the only one who thinks like this...although Im only 28...lol...but I did make lots of calls to the radio station to play my song so I could tape it......
BTW that was a fantastic rant!

[brandysmama]

I'm only 27, and even I could identify with some of those, since we weren't exactly on the cutting edge of technology around our house. We didn't have a touch-tone phone until 1988! And I never had caller ID until I got married 2 years ago. We had to talk my dad into getting call waiting like only 5 years ago.

[Kade]

I'm 28, and I guess that's close enough because all of that applies to me!

Originally Posted by CTDog

I remember my mom yelling all the time "get outside and play!" It wasn't unusual during the summer for us to be outside from 8 a.m. to 8 pm. Now a lot of kids stay inside on their computers and they all look like pale ghosts LOL

Yep! When I was a kid the children had run of the neighborhood in the afternoons. We were outside all day, and I was even the quiet, bookish type. Now it seems like you can hardly get a kid to go outside.

Actually, that's not true -- the kid across the street likes to go outside and play ball with his friends, using our house as tthe outfield. And then our front window gets mysteriously broken -- I kind of wish the little punk would stay inside and play video games!

And does anybody remember when the auto manufacturers were still in their vinyl seat phase? Nothing like cramming into the back seat of a Chevette with no a/c with five friends, to emerge with red, sweaty, sticky legs covered in the vinyl "bump" pattern.

[Jamila]

Originally Posted by Kade

And does anybody remember when the auto manufacturers were still in their vinyl seat phase? Nothing like cramming into the back seat of a Chevette with no a/c with five friends, to emerge with red, sweaty, sticky legs covered in the vinyl "bump" pattern.

lol....thats funny.

I also remember when the record store sold records.

[Raised By Wolves]

Originally Posted by flyndog

What a bunch of old farts!

Aw, now don't go pickin' on us old timers! How many years have you been stuck at 21 years old? Seems I remember some mention of 8-track tapes in one of your posts.

I'm definately having "flashbacks" from this thread!

I remember the leather Davey Crocket style fringe jackets. I still have two of them stuck in my closet, which I've had since 9th grade. Hey maybe they're worth somethin' now!

I also remember cutting the outside play short, so we could come inside to watch Star Trek. And all of the parents were freakin' out because they thought Mr. Spock looked like the devil!

When we were "bad" in highschool, the wine du'jur of choice at the parties was Tyrolia, Spanyada, Boone's Farm, or Ripple. I think Boone's Farm Srawberry Hill is still around. Hmmm, I wonder if it should be seved chilled, and would go well with fish? YEEUUUCK!

[AstraChapman]

YOUR RIGHT! We have it very easy. Still though Our kids will have it easier. With progression like it is who knows what is next.

But yes we have it easy.