For the SPOILED under 30's

[lyfenlyn]

A little tee hee---

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 kids about how hard I had
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 our ass! No where was safe!

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'd 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.'cause that's how we rolled, dig?

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!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video
games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! Wehad 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! 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 1980or before!

Is there anything you can add to this list???

[Boombats]

I had to read god damn porno magazines! Second hand from a friend's older brother, yuk!

[Christopher Irving]

Man I miss 8 track cassettes!:( especialy if you had a radio that looked like a dynomite explosion plunger!!LOL!!!

[lyfenlyn]

I still have boxes full of cassettes from the 80's. Im never getting rid of them. Or that 8 track player that looked like a big globe! LOL! I still want one of those.

Christopher Irving said:

Man I miss 8 track cassettes!:( especialy if you had a radio that looked like a dynomite explosion plunger!!LOL!!!

[lyfenlyn]

Or when you had to watch is scrambled on cable!

Boombats said:

I had to read god damn porno magazines! Second hand from a friend's older brother, yuk!

[Boombats]

Skinemax!!!

[CurvyDivaJC]

I so feel you on taping the radio. I would get in trouble cause I would use my mother's old church tapes. I remember when MTV was invented and they played music. I remember the old cable boxes when you had to get up and slide to the channel that you wanted. When cable was basic and there was only like 40 channels. When we HAD to go outside to PLAY and loved it. If my mother took my bike away...it was like death. If I wanted something extra that my mother couldn't or wouldn't buy me I had to make some money myself to buy it...by babysitting or cutting grass. I remember my first computer was a Texas Instrument I had to hook up to the TV and the cartridges looked like eight track tapes. I remember imagination and being taught that you have to work hard to get what you want out of life. I remember hiding my report card and lying to my mom about it. I remember when I got a whoopin I ran around the house and act like I passed out so I wouldn't have to get it. Needless to say when I snapped out of it...I still got the whoopin. So much has changed...sometimes I think what a shame.

[lyfenlyn]

LOL! It's funny those tapes when you had to hold the recorder up to the radio or speakers and be really quiet.

I remember going outside to play and having to be in when the street lights came on. You didn't want your mom calling your name through the neighborhood looking for you because if she came looking for you it was with the belt in her hand and she would whoop you in front of your friends!

If you got punishment it did feel like you would die. No phone, no friends over, no hanging after school, no dessert, bead early, no TV AND a whoopin too.






CurvyDivaJC said:

I so feel you on taping the radio. I would get in trouble cause I would use my mother's old church tapes. I remember when MTV was invented and they played music. I remember the old cable boxes when you had to get up and slide to the channel that you wanted. When cable was basic and there was only like 40 channels. When we HAD to go outside to PLAY and loved it. If my mother took my bike away...it was like death. If I wanted something extra that my mother couldn't or wouldn't buy me I had to make some money myself to buy it...by babysitting or cutting grass. I remember my first computer was a Texas Instrument I had to hook up to the TV and the cartridges looked like eight track tapes. I remember imagination and being taught that you have to work hard to get what you want out of life. I remember hiding my report card and lying to my mom about it. I remember when I got a whoopin I ran around the house and act like I passed out so I wouldn't have to get it. Needless to say when I snapped out of it...I still got the whoopin. So much has changed...sometimes I think what a shame.

[the outsider]

You guys are going to laugh but I still tape songs off the radio onto blank cassette tapes. When I hear a good song and I'm nowhere near the radio, I still rush to the radio and tape it even though it's halfway through the song! The best part happens when the tape runs out...when it stops, I just flip the tape (even if it's in the middle of the song) and continue my taping. And I did actually send snail mail today...I hand wrote a letter to someone and walked to the mailbox.

I also remember using a rotary phone...it took practically ten minutes to dial the whole number and you'd get a finger cramp in the middle of dialing the number!

[Rosenda]

I still have my old red round assymetrical AM handheld radio I took to school in junior high!
And Lyf............my father told us growing in Galveston how they all had to walk 2 miles to and from school.

When I finally went with my sister, mother, and niece over 10 years later and we visited the house where Pops and his 12 siblings grew up, do you know how far that school is (and yes it's the same one)?



TWO BLOCKS! 2 very SHORT blocks. Girl, you can SEE the school from the front porch of the house they lived in!! My sister and I had to ask Dad when we got back. He laughed smiled at us and said "well, you didn't complain having to walk to school occasionally, did you?" Geez.

[XiaMin]

Ha! I remember taping stuff off the radio! Trying to make a mix tape for someone (because believe it or not not everyone had such crude devices as a recorder) could take days, and no matter how hard you tried there were always bits where you could hear the 'pause' or 'start' button being pressed or hear your own breathing. God forbid your mom bust into the room during a song. She could give a shit about the quality of your recording....whatever she needed needed doing NOW, taping be damned. I also remember my mom used to tape Dallas for my dad, on cassette because we had no VCR for a loooong time. But damn if that didn't require tomb-like silence LOL!

My first commuter car didn't even have a cassette player, i had to take a portable one in the front seat and REWIND the song if you wanted to hear it more than once, while driving! :)

We had a Texas Instruments too and I think the only game we had was "Chisom Trail" which the title made absolutely no freakin sense, it was like pac-man. Come to find out you were supposedly leading a heard of cattle through the obstacles. WTF? nothing on that thing remotely resembled a cow or a cowboy or a 'Trail" I doubt kids today would even know what leading a heard of cattle means. Even the most enlightend among them would still assume if you need to get a shitload of cows somewhere you put them all in a bunch of trailer trucks.

And porn? I remember my dad had a stack of Players magazine. Now I guess kids would have to stumble upon a hidden backup drive or something.

Without cell phones it's a wonder we were ever able to meet up with friends at any location. Do you know how much time was wasted wandering about a concert or mall if you forgot to predesignate a spot? Or if you called (from a payphone to a land-line) for someone to pick you up but then you had to leave that spot before they got there (like if a creepy dude started hanging around or say, the secuirty guard kicked you out) fucking infuriating! Now kids not only know exactly where their friends are at every second, they can even know how many times they've burped in the last 10 minutes! Priceless!

I could go on and on, but It's pretty amazing though if you think about all the changes we've seen and how fast things have advanced. How did we survive indeed!

[Rosenda]

Xiamin, haha!!! HAHAAAAHHAH!! I taped that sunday night punk/newwave/mod show I used to listen to. I taped all of Kiss's first solo albums cause this other rock station played them ahead of release. Me and my friends taped the punk and rock tune we liked off the radio and play them at school on our little tape players. I remember my Dad bought me this small size Sony tape player that was portable. Heehee!! Sitting next to the SPEAKER of your stereo at home taping something for your friends.

Porn, I found some OLD naked people magazines of my parents collection including Players. Some of the mags were older than that from the 60's!!