30 or over

[HOGGY952]

IF you are 30 or older you will probably think this is hilarious!

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 five miles to school every morning ...
uphill BOTH ways...
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 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. Ermm you do know what a library is don't you?

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 postbox 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 damn record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you
had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ usually
talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

And talk of about hardship? You couldn't just download porn!
You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to
buy you a copy of "Playboy"! Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone
and somebody else called they got an engaged tone, that's it!

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 mum, 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" and the graphics
sucked ass! 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!

Sure, we had television, but back then some still had black and white and only 4 channels there was no onscreen menu and no remote control!
You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel
and there was no Cartoon Network either!
And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up, we
had to use the cooker or go build a fire ... 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 before

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[kidgreen61]

I recently demonstrated my old record playing turntable to my kids.

They were doubled up laughing like the Smash Martians.

Needless to say, one of them asked how the remote could work!!

 

[Alastairreid]

Growing up in the sixties,
short trousers worn to school until you went to secondary.
the belt (tawse) for even the most minor infringements.
getting a slap on the back of the head from your teacher for not sitting up straight.

black and white tellys (colour tvs were virtually unheard of)
the telephone was in a red box at the end of the street
or you could improvise 2 tin cans and a long piece of string pulled tight connected to your pals house next door.
in later years the first tv remotes were actually still attached to the tv with a long piece of wire.

there was 3 tv channels and the telly shut down at midnight.
if you were absent from school the truant man came a calling.
double glazing, central heating........they may have existed but were pretty much a rarity.

in the days when cars used to backfire and a starting handle followed by a knackered wrist to get it started.

yup the good ol days! never had it so good.

 

[tim west]

there was 3 tv channels and the telly shut down at midnight.

and the testcard and music in the afternoon, watching the white dot disappear after switching off

 

[EddieM]

I recently demonstrated my old record playing turntable to my kids.

They were doubled up laughing like the Smash Martians.

Needless to say, one of them asked how the remote could work!!

sadly that's because a generation has grown up cloth eared, if you listen to any MP3, on any system, it's sound stage is lousy compared to vinyl or even CD.

 

[Alastairreid]

there was 3 tv channels and the telly shut down at midnight.

and the testcard and music in the afternoon, watching the white dot disappear after switching off

and the wee mans voice reminding us in the interests of safety to switch off and unplug your tv set.

after the national anthem of course (which my old grandpa used to stand up for)

 

[Space cat]

You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled.

HOGGY952, you had it far too easy. You were spoiled!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

If you weren't within range of a pirate station you had to wait for Luxembourg to come on the air and the sound quality was crap BEFORE the disk jockey talked over it.

You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Playboy"! Those were your options!

We had to hope some kid would bring a copy - or even a few pages - into school. And for what? A few bare breasts! Then there were the ones who thought they knew all about sex and poked fun at the rest of us. In reality, their ignorance was staggering!

We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!

We had Monopoly. Your 'guy' was a little shape that you pushed round the board - and you had to use your brains.

Sure, we had television, but back then some still had black and white and only 4 channels

FOUR channels!!! We had BBC and ITV; channels 5 and 8 around here. There was nothing on but the test card most of the time and they actually went off the air at night.

When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was!

You had a phone!

As far as I can see, it's only the technology that's changed since you were young. You were handed free speech, free love and free radio on a plate - and now you want free file sharing too. You wouldn't have lasted five minutes in 1960.

 

[HOGGY952]

I remember buying my first vhs recorder which was a ferguson 3v23 which cost me about £600 and the controls were piano keys,and a blank tape about £20and the adult films we used to watch were all snowy and we thought were great.

 

[kidgreen61]

Any minute now, somebody's going to tell us how poor they were...

As in "we were so poor we couldn't afford a summer"

 

[gregers]

i can remember the first film i ever watched on a video recorder,escape from new york.there was about 14 kids all bunking school round a m8s house .

 

[tim west]

we were so poor, we used to stand outside the tv hire shop to watch the testcard

 

[Johnmelad502]

We were so poor, when it was cold we used to sit around a candle.

When it was really cold, dad would light it.

 

[Alastairreid]

we were so poor, if i hadn't been born a boy i would have had nothing to play with.

 

[Johnmelad502]

We were so poor, my parents could not afford to pay attention!