The good ole days ...

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 ... barefoot ... 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 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 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 are living “the life”! And I hate to say it but you kids today don't know how good you've got it!

Playgrounds were full of hazards and death traps, not painted with maps of the world and full of mulch. I remember when a hot slide burned your little butt … and teeter totters taught you who your real friends were … hanging upside down from the monkey bars was mandatory at recess -- not prohibited.

When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the darn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!! I’ll bet you don’t even know what the Dewey decimal system is!

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.

There were no MP3's or Napsters! 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 DJs usually talked over the beginning and messed it all up anyway!

iTunes? CDs? DVDs? BlueRay? Nope, try cassette players and VCR tapes.

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!

And 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 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, mister!

Cell phones? Ahhhhhh, no. You kept a quarter in your pocket in case you needed to call home on a pay phone!

GPS systems? Map Quest? It was called a MAP in my days. If you got lost, you didn’t press a little blue button on your rear view mirror, you pulled into a gas station and asked for help … and got it!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! with games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. 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 ... 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 … which really wasn’t necessary anyway since there were only four channels total and one was PBS.

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 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!

Going to McDonald’s was a TREAT, not an every day occurrence. A big night out was a trip to Sizzler.

And I did not even have a sip of coffee until I was in college; much less have a frappacino mocha latte every day on my way home from school.

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

In my days, punishment was being sent to my room. Today, that is like a haven for you with phones, televisions, computers, etc. I had four walls and a bed. Whoopie!


So my friends over 30 -- any more to add?