Both ways

[augman7518 (imported)]

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!

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 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'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 damn 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 damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalogue!!

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 my ass! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3' s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn 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 @#*% 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 the tape would come undone. To play your favorite song over and over again, you couldn't just hit "Repeat," noooo, you had to stop the damn tape, push rewind, then play, then rewind, then play, then rewind, oops went too far, then fast forward, then play - it took 5 minutes just to get to the start of the song!

We didn't have fancy crap like redial or 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!

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! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your ass 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 rat-bastards!

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

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 [gasp] before!

Regards,

The Over 30 Crowd

[A-1 (imported)]

YOU FORGOT THE "SNOW" PART.

You know, barefoot "in the show" uphill, both ways.

[randy (imported)]

Like my father figure said, "You kids may have it easy now but when i was your age; at least i could have sex without being wrapped in a tire."

[coinflipper_21 (imported)]

When my daughter was a teenager, she heard my tale of walking five miles to school every day and came back with a yadda,yadda,yadda type attitude. I got her in the car, drove to the house where I lived when I went to high school, zeroed the trip odo, and drove the route that I used to walk to school. When I got to the school I asked her to look at the trip odo. After that, when either my wife or I told her about how it was when we were young we have not gotten any doubting "attitude" back. When you tell a young person something like that it helps if you are able to prove it.

[DeaconBlues (imported)]

In all honesty and fairness...

When I grew up I was SERIOUSLY WORRIED about the very real prospect of war with the Soviet Union, being DRAFTED, and even I remember the terror and fear I felt every time we went to the hospital (even for silly stuff like a tetanus shot) and I would see the "iron lung" in the hallway... Does anyone here remember the "iron lung?" Well, a long long long time ago, Jonal Saulk developed the polio vaccine and that pretty well ended the need for most iron lungs, but they terrified me whenever I saw them.

Things have gotten better in many ways, so "kids these days" might have it better from SOME POINTS OF VIEW.... Then again... And let's all be FAIR, just like Faux news is "fair and ballanced," as we look at what "kids these days" are facing...

The world today is a LOT MEANER, CRUELER, less forgiving, more competative. Lots of "successful" old geezers will loudly and STUPIDLY disagree with me I know, but seriously, times are hard and they have been getting much worse for the past twenty or thirty years, and the worst of the worst part of it is the general baseless hatred that people seem to have for one another. Kids these days face a harsher world than we oldsters did.

True enough, today, we have this glorious "internet" and the great "Information Technology Revolution" and all the techno gadgets that kids from my generation only dreamed of when we watched "Lost in Space" or "Star Trek." But REMEMBER Star Trek? Remember how the women looked good and wore short skirts back in the 60's? Try acting like Captain Kirk today and you will get your ass SUED

Sometime during the 1980's, the new right took things over, and gone forever was any sexual freedom. The discovery of the HIV and AIDS certainly pushed forward an new PRUDISH sexual hypocracy. In many ways, people today, especially in the U.S. are more sexually pent up and repressed than they were 100 years ago. I do NOT envy children growing up today, especially when I read REAL (not humorous or fake) news of SCHOOLBOYS in 4th grade being CRIMINALLY PROSECUTED FOR SEXUAL HARRASSMENT!

Kid's today have "roller blades" (the ones with parents who can afford them at least) and all the "extreme" fun stuff that I never ever had... Yet I had my own horse and knew how to ride when I was a kid, most children today never ever get to see a horse. It shames me deeply to know that I cannot possibly afford a horse for my son, he will probably never learn to ride a horse, or enjoy a trek across the now non-existant open range.

Today, children are living in a ever shrinking world, with fewer and fewer chances of ever realizing any life's dream. For children of the U.S.A., the prospect is ever dimming, and sadly, for children elswhere it is not really getting brighter.

No, I do not think for one second "kids these days" have it so much better, they have it worse, and I think we all in our hearts know that.

[Paolo]

YOU FORGOT THE "SNOW" PART.

You know, barefoot "in the show" uphill, both ways....

and carrying a younger sibling on your back.

[Riverwind (imported)]

...

and carrying a younger sibling on your back.

and that was for summer school, in the winter it was worse.

my middle school and high school were 3 1/2 miles from my house, walked it many times in the snow, up hill both ways, sleet and everything, being raised in LA was not fun.

Gas 16.9 cents a gal,

(valley boy) River

[coinflipper_21 (imported)]

In all honesty and fairness...

....Today, children are living in a ever shrinking world, with fewer and fewer chances of ever realizing any life's dream. For children of the U.S.A., the prospect is ever dimming, and sadly, for children elswhere it is not really getting brighter.

No, I do not think for one second "kids these days" have it so much better, they have it worse, and I think we all in our hearts know that.

Good point, but I'm not quite that pessimistic. We had advantages and difficulties that our kids do not, and they have advantages and difficulties that we did not. The one thing that you can truly say is that times have changed. We live in interesting times. To live in interesting times was an old Chinese curse, but the opportunities provided by such times can also be a blessing if you are willing to work. If I could be young again today would I? You bet! (Especially if I could retain the knowledge I have now.) I think that great opportunities are still available to our kids that we cannot see because we are not looking at them though young eyes.

[calmeilles (imported)]

When my daughter was a teenager, she heard my tale of walking five miles to school every day and came back with a yadda,yadda,yadda type attitude. I got her in the car, drove to the house where I lived when I went to high school, zeroed the trip odo, and drove the route that I used to walk to school. When I got to the school I asked her to look at the trip odo. After that, when either my wife or I told her about how it was when we were young we have not gotten any doubting "attitude" back. When you tell a young person something like that it helps if you are able to prove it.

You drove the route? Why not walk it with her: might have lacked the odo figure but would have had the advantage of authentic experience.

[devi (imported)]

The under 30 crowd is paying for their lack of daily exercise with obesity, diabetes, and heart problems.