I got this in email... it is priceless
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 keep their family from starving to death!
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've reached the ripe old age of 34, I can't help but look
around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so fuckin' easy! I
mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! And I hate
to say it, but you kids today 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 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 fuckin' mailbox,
and it would take like a week to get there! And there were no MP3s or Kazaa!
If you wanted to steal music, you had to go to the record store and
shoplift it yourself! Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio
and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and fuck 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!
It was either that or jack-off to the underwear section of the JC Penney
catalog! Those were your options! We didn't have fancy shit 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
screen character 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 in front of you,
you were fucked! 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 the fuck I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little
bastards, just to watch cartoons! 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 last five minutes back in 1987!
Comments
1987? they wouldn't have survived 5 sec in 1976.
3 regular TV channels and maybe if your lucky PBS and an independent channel. Everything was closed on Sundays, except Church and the 7-11. 6 screens in the Mall was the big movie theatre. Remote Control was when you parents told you to get up and change the damn channel. There was no VCR, or DVD. You either saw it in the movie theater or waited for them to show it on TV years later, usually butchered by the censors and the advertisers. You played outside, a lot, because there were less things to break, fewer adults watching, and there wasn't any AC in your playroom anyway. You read books, played in the playground, or with other kids. Because that was all there was to do.
Discipline is school wasn't a problem, because every adult there had a paddle. The old school marms who didn't want to dirty their hands would go ask the coaches to smoke your backside. Paddles were drilled, sanded, shaped, designed, modified, and tweaked to enhance their visual, audible, and sensory effectiveness. If it didn't draw blood, leave a bruise that was visible at more than 20 feet, or break bones it was okay. Counselling consisted of a lecture, and then paddling, and a warning about future paddling or a trip to the principle's office and more paddling.
We didn't wear seatbelts, or protective clothing or equipment when skating, riding, or swimming. We walked around at night, and by ourselves, we left the door unlocked, and the car windows down. We talked to strangers and ran with scissors too. We rode around in the back of uncovered pick up trucks. We cruised around on bikes without helments. But we sat quietly in the back of the familiy car while our parents were driving. Because they would pull over and beat your ass. If you yelled for help, the people that came would help hold you down.
If you did something bad, you got smacked. If an adult saw you do something bad and they were any one other than a total stranger, they smacked you and then told your parents. If they were a total stranger, they would ask you who your parents were, or ask around until some kid fessed up or they would knock on doors, and then tell your parents. If an adult told your parents you did something bad, you got whooped. If the informant was a babysitter, grandparent, teacher, preacher, or even worse a police officer ... Let's just say that you had to change your clothes. The friction from the ground as you were rocketed from one end of the house to the other would cause them to fray, tear, or in extreme case ... smoke. All I can say is that only happened once, unless you suffered from extreme bad luck, amnesia, or just a serious case of dumbass.
Posted by: Steve | February 7, 2003 06:00 PM