Remember when?

[fuji869]

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 blizards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room school house 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 the world I was going to lay a lunch of crap like that on 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 twenty-nine, 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, you had to go to the library and look it up yourselves!

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 mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

And there were no MP3s or Napsters! 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'd usually talk over the beginning and mess 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 look at the lingerie section of the JC Penney catalog! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy stuff 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! 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! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were screwed!

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 I am saying!?!

We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little *******s!

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 1984!

[RiggoDrill]

Nice post Fuji ...

Pictures of nekked ladies were hard to come by back then ....

I mean ... dammit!!!!

[Awgustlab]

Oh yes, but we did have the best music of the 80's back then. I sure wish new musicians these days would come out with some original sounds like the 80s did.

[phishhead]

Ok. I guess you can have your own opinion. But listen. It is hard to be a kid, and/or a parent in any certain point of time or generation because it is always rough. It never gets easier.

[Yomar]

Originally posted by phishhead

Ok. I guess you can have your own opinion. But listen. It is hard to be a kid, and/or a parent in any certain point of time or generation because it is always rough. It never gets easier.

Thats only because we haven't perfected labotomies yet...soon we will be saying, "remember when people were irrational and maladjusted" ahhh, yes, yes, those were the days...and everyone will have a good chuckle

...what were we talking about?

[phishhead]

I'm not sure. what we were talking about..

[fuji869]

Originally posted by Awgustlab

Oh yes, but we did have the best music of the 80's back then. I sure wish new musicians these days would come out with some original sounds like the 80s did.

Amen brother.

I still listen to 80s and early 90s music, back when you had to have musical talent to be in the music industry!

[Pete]

Atari 2600.............We had Pong. Cable with 20............Rabbit ears with 5. Dam Fuji...........you don't know how good you had it:laugh: :laugh:

I go through this with my daughter all the time. I hadn't flown on a jet till I was about 19. She's done more then 20 flights. That's over 2 a year. Up to the age of 25, I had been to Disney world once. She's been there 12 times. She does everything. I'm talkin go-karts, ATV's, horseback riding, fishing, boating, and vacations every year. When she goes to her grandmothers home in NJ, she see's first hand what it is to live in the 1950/60s, with the actual working "Party line" with vintage rotery phone that's actually attached to the wall by a wire:doh: The TV with only 5 (English speaking) channels buggs her out big time. ME TOO. When she was younger, She couldn't understand why a kid would play with a doll that didn't talk and play games. She once asked how all the colors had faded from the movie I had been watching.

Thank God they invented Legos when I was about 9 or 10. I'm happy to say I still play with my Legos from time to time when stressed out. Burn and build I always say:high: Every Christmas season, I set up my old slot car set. Another one my daughter can't figure out why I play with when I have a nice RC stadium truck. I could be the end of the world if her Walkman, or Gameboy is not working on a drive longer then 5 minutes. All we had was the radio station (AM) that the parents listened to, and an old Etch-a-sketch that would get wiped out with bigger bumps in the car that had NO AIR CONDITIONER.

I know what your sayin Fuji. Gotta go pick up my daughter at the movies now. Me, I haven't seen a new release since ..................I'll get back to ya:laugh:

[PCS]

Then: B.B. Gun shooting galleries at arcade..then years later pong.......(then intellivision )

Now: Xbox and PC with pentium 4 processor.

Then: Phones with cords and gasp...........dials. (Communicators were cheesy visions of a faraway future from a TV show)

Now. Communicators.......er......... cell phones....that even take pictures.

Then: RCA Television, tubes and all. built in speakers. Antennae on roof or one on TV with aluminum foil flags. Watched shows in black and white.

Now. DVD's with big 21 inch TV, digital cable, or dish network. Dolby surround sound.

Then: Hope for repeats

Now: VCR's and TIVO

Then: Drive in's and small flat theaters.

Now: Stadium seating and THX

Then: 8 tracks. 45 singles. (#$%$#%! Okay! Where the #$%$ is the 45 record adaptor?????!) Cleaning the dust off needles. (Awwwwwwwwwwww Man! The record has a scratch in it! #@$%$! Tape it anyway!)

Now: CD players and R/W Cd's.

Then: Hendrix, the Beatles, Joplin, The Who, Led Zepplin, MOTOWN!, Herb Albert.

Now: ???????????????????????????????? ( kidding. Love alot of that stuff)

Then.( a little later): Bell bottom jeans and Terri(sp),cloth shirts.

Now: pants half way down arse and whatever.

Then: Converse

Now: Nike, reeboK, ect....

Then: Candy Loving

Now: sigh....????

Then: 10 to 20 cent comics. John Buscema, Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, and later Byrne and Claremont.

Now: Who cares?

Then: Major Matt Mason. Marx Army men and sets. And later........Micronaughts

Now: Digimon?

Timeless: Legos, Lincloln Logs, Gi Joes, Slot car racing, (#$@$#%! Car fell off the # 2 turn again!!!!) Balsa wood gliders and planes, playdough, Hot Wheels, matchbox, Joplin Hendrix, Led Zepplin, MOTOWN!

Brief downer. Then: Vietnam war, ( watched TV every night to see if I could see my dad), "Your dad kills babys", John and Robert Kennedy, tail end of segregation, Hendrix, Joplin, young people dying in front of me due to drugs. "Can't play with him. He's Black", Grissom and company never making it off the pad.

Now: The wall. Lewinsky, Cobin, Tu Pac, Cocheran, (sp), Columbia.

[OrangeSkin]

You make good points, Fuji. I remember how I wanted to choke my elders when they discussed life in the '40s and '50s. How Howdy Doody was so much better than this "new-fangled" MTV, How they had to go over to their friends house to watch TV because "ain't everybody have them then."

Now I tell my kids about how MTV was once truly music television, how Run DMC is so much better than Ja Rule, and how I didn't even own a VCR until my grandfather gave my father his original prototype in '88. My dad still has that piece of crap, amazing that it still works.

Things haven't neccessarily turned out for the better. The old drive-in where I used to make out with my numerous lady friends was turned into a dollar theater before it closed and is now a pile of $hit on a piece of $hit road.

Funny how in 20 or 30 years our kids will be talking about how life was so hard with DVD players, digital cable, and *gasp* wireless phones.

[carlsbadd]

Interesting subject. I grew up in Great Falls VA. When it was just farmland. (I am 42) The biggest mall in the country was Tysons Corner and Hechts had a huge toy department,with all kinds of cool hot wheels. I could actually play hot wheels for hours without getting bored.

We had a station wagon instead of a minivan or SUV

We supplemented our heating in the winter with wood fireplaces

We did not get paid for stuff we did around the house they were "Chores" and were expected.

If you got in a fight you would wait untill the guy got up before you hit him again, and would end up being friends or at least stay out of each others way.

Nobody had tatoo's or piercings

Our TV had a rotor Antenna and would pick up far away stations if the conditions were just right.

The "Hyper " kids in class were expected to perform just like everyone else, without Ritilan.

If a neighbor caught you doing something wrong they would tell your parents.