How did we ever survive.....

Colt Carbine · Jan 20, 2011

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious tales 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 on God's green earth that I was going to lay a bunch of junk 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 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 dang 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 dang 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 butts! No where 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 screw 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 stuff 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 dang cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY goodness !!! 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.

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 butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!!

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 brats!!

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

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 had to do 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 riding "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!

Regards,
The Over 40 Crowd

spectra · Jan 20, 2011

Good one

But the Atari well I did not have that 2600 mine was the earlier version. Oh I also had pong with the gun :s0114:

deadeye · Jan 20, 2011

I got that email a while back, still funny though. We were uptown with the Intelivision setup from Sears though.

ejmpnu92 · Jan 20, 2011

I can remember using a type writer in grade school and getting marked down because no one else used one, and it was not electric. Took me for freaking ever.

I loved football, but only got to see about one or two games a season, had to go to my grandparents on Sundays. There were too many adventures to be experienced that would never had been, had I been sitting in front of the TV.

Lived on 5 acres, if the phone rang, usually it took a while to answer it, if it got answered at all. Did not know what an answering machine was.

If I wanted to go over and visit a friend, it had to be planned in advance by about a week, considering my nearest friend lived 19 miles away.

Rode the bus to school, caught the bus at 615am, got to school around 8am. Usually arrived home after 5pm. When I was in high school, I usually got home after 7pm.

Snow days!!!! Only had 2 of those, a rare 7 inches at one time. If it was anything less, school was on.

I asked about having a computer, my dad looked at me and asked, "For what?"

I spent the summers with my grandparents, in the high country of the sierras. One summer, I left for camp the day after school was out, only left the mountain because of a dentist appointment (5 days) and then returned for the rest of the summer. Caught more fish than I can remember. All I had to do was tell my grandparents which way up or down the creek I was headed. Usually showed up after dark.

The vacations, spent with my family, usually canoeing either in the high country lakes or off the coast of San Simeon.

Funny thing is, I thought I was spoiled!

drew · Jan 20, 2011

Funny. Many of the items apply to me even though I'm under 40. We had some late starts due to snow where I grew up. It was when the bus driver pulled off into a little deeper snow than they should have and waited for a guy who passed by to come back with their tractor.