The 'Under 30' Crowd

I got this in an email from one of my friend’s and it just made me laugh. It’s so true!!! If you’re under the age of 30, don’t take offense - - - I’m not calling you spoiled - - - the email is calling you spoiled.

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious stories about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way 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!

1. 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, 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 way down and across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
3. There were no MP3's or IPODS. If you wanted to steal music, you had to walk 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 MESS it all up!
4. 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! If you were waiting for a boy to call, you had to make sure everyone else was not using the phone - which usually involved getting into a fight with your parents or siblings.
5. 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 school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances.  Also, there were no answering machines - so you never knew who called when you weren't home.  Plus, some of us over 50 may remember "party lines".  You shared a phone with someone else in your town or a town 10 miles away.  You might pick up your phone and hear someone you didn't know having a conversation.  This meant you couldn't use the phone until their call was done.  Then, you could either listen in or hang up and wait for their call to be over.  Remember, when you made a call they could also listen in on your conversation.
6. We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstations, the Wii, or X-Box video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like Pong, Space Invaders, and Asteroids, and the graphics were horrible! Your 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 that took forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died!  Just like life!!!!  Finally we got a little fellow call PAC MAN and he was awesome - we had hit the "big time". And then his sister came along - Ms. Pac Man.  Boy, were we in seventh heaven.
7. When you went to the movie theater there was no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!
8. Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 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 either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I'm saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!  Plus, we had to ACTUALLY get off the sofa or chair to change the channels.  No REMOTE.  CAN YOU BELIEVE IT?????
9. And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a fire . . . imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing or a pan with HOT oil and real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever like an idiot.  But boy, did it taste good.  It was worth the wait.
10. When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked in, we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7 foot cord that ran to the phone - not the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom - guess what we had to do . . . hang up and talk to them later. And if by some chance you walked too far with the phone (which of course was attached to the cord), the phone would fly out of your hands - like a boomerang - and god forbid someone was within standing distance - they might of gotten hit.  And don't forget, those cords stretched so much that they would get tangled - so there was the added chore of "untangling" your phone cord.

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 OR 1970 OR even 1960.

Regards,

The Over 30 Crowd