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 our 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 favourite 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! 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 before!
Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd
Thanks for the laugh Hils!
LOVE IT!! My partner and I were at the local shopping centre tonight and the subject came up about kids today too! We noticed in the food court just how many kids/families that were lining up for their macdonalds, kfc etc we couldn’t help but talk about the good old days when food like that was a treat – we both were allowEd to eat macdonalds once, maybe twice a year, if we were REALLY lucky…these kids today appear to be having this type of food with the weekly shopping trip and who knows how many other times during the week..none of them looked as half as excited (or even the tiniest bit excited) as I would have been as a kid lining up for my once a year ‘special treat’!
Kids today are VERY SPOILT and unfortunately in this regard we felt we were watching the early formation of bad eating habits being formed right in front of our eyes!
I definately consider myself lucky to have grown up in the good old days and I’m going to let my kids know all about it too!!! (even though I too promised that I’d never be like my parents and bore them to bits with stories starting with “when I was your age…”) ha ha
LOL! I remember my parents saying all that stuff to me and now I’m telling my kids…the sad fact is my kids don’t know any different, they had computers in Kinder! I would hate to wash clothes by hand just as much as my kids would hate to have to write a letter! Thank god for modern technology.
I just have to say that it is easy to sit at a shopping center and say ” I would never allow my kids to be like that” and “My kids are going to appreciate everything and never be spoiled”. Be careful not to judge until you walk in their (parents) shoes. I remember my sister-in-law saying the same things to me but as she now has a 20 month old (mine are 12yo twins and 9 yo) she is eating her words and I have to sit back and laugh! Being a parent in the the year 2010 is very difficult-I tell my kids everything in moderation and every day activity is important. You have to juggle creating “body conscious” kids against “obesity”. This is a whole other argument. Parents don’t have the luxuries of staying home and cooking every night like our parents did. We juggle work, home duties, school, kids sport and still try to find time for us. NOT EASY.
I use to have all these “idealistic” views of a perfect family too!!
HA! Oh my…. What a big laugh Hils! I too am a child of the eighties and proud of it! I was having a giggle at my husband making our eldest daughter (11 yo) pack the dishwasher with much moaning and whinging going on.. He said “Back in my day we had to wash and dry the dishes by hand and I tried every single trick in the book to get out of it!! So there is nothing you can say that I haven’t already tried!!” Needless to say- the dishwasher was packed…. Yes- it is true that our kids are pampered!
Not everything is better now though- our music was MUCH better…
Cheers
Karen
too funny! my little girl started kinder last week and she calls her teacher by her first name……I can’t get my head around it! when I was a kid, if I didn’t address an adult by their title (ie Mrs. Smith, Mr. Blogs), I’d get the belt…..now my 3 year old waltzes into class and says “Good Morning Lillian” to her teacher…..it just doesn’t seem right….
Hilarious! OMG I remember when my parents brought home the new TV, it was 51cm by memory! Now my children sit in front of a 110cm+ plasma…and no more having to sit right in front of the old round faced box, like we did as kids just to see the picture! Each of them own a Nintendo DS…my siblings and I were lucky to share a Gameboy and Super Nintendo(second-hand of course!)between us. And the computer is another thing in itself…I recall typing letters on the old manual type writer! When the school got electric ones I was stoked.And I agree Hils, how easy do kids have it when researching a topic…hmmmmm sometimes discovering a little too much about things that Google somehow finds relative! The last peeve of mine, is having to grit me teeth and threaten my children when out in public. They seem to be testing me as much as they possibly can. Knowing that Mummy won’t smack them in front of others. That is until we make a toilet trip or reach the car….smart little turds!
What is the world coming to? Illegal to smack your kids…giving us no authority over our children, and yet we cop the greasy stares of strangers if the kids are chucking a shit at the supermarket!