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 forty, 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!

1) 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 catalog!!   

2) 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!

3) 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!

4) There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!

5) 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 then the tape would come undone rendering it useless.  Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby!  Dig?

6) 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!

7) There weren't any freaking' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOSH !!!  Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!  And then there's TEXTING.  Yeah, right.  Please!  You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

8) 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 parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!!  You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

9) We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics!  We had the Atari 2600!  With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'.  Your screen 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!

10) 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!!!  Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!

11) 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!

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

13) And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long.  Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort.  And if you came back inside... you were doing chores! 
And car seats - oh, please!  Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on.  If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!   
See!  That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten!  You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in the 1970's   or any time before!
8) 8) 8) 8)  So true...

# 3  was so true lol   All parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! (and when you got home there was one more coming your way.)   :)) 

LOL, this almost belongs on the Poli forum.

Quote from: Solars Toy on November 10, 2010, 09:14:27 PM

9) We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics!  We had the Atari 2600!  With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'.  Your screen 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!

Hell you were in HOG Heaven compared to the 50's. We had Pin Ball machines and that was it. A nickle a pop, and after you got familiar with the machine and started to win "games" by accumulating high scores. The owner would take it out and replace it with another machine, that would take another months allowance to get good enough to win on.
The only break that you caught was that some machines could take a whole lot of "Shakin" that would bang the balls around more and rack up points. Although most of them would tilt and the game would end abruptly. While some tilted real easy and it was over ostensibly before it began, if you tried to beat the devil.
I can remenber one time clearly when I had spent quite a bit of time in this one candy store, and knew the machines better than the way home ( of course it cost all my spending money ). I went from one to the other most of the afternoon racking up "freebies". The owner was watching me with a look that only could mean one thing, and sure enough, on the next trip they were all replaced. At least I served some purpose in life, as in becoming a "bellweather" for greedy entrepreneurs. While my Father said that I'd never amount to anything.

I identify with most of those except we never had a game system--I envied the kids with the Atari 2600.

My kids asked for the day off school today.  I acquiesced--as long as they tidied, dusted, and vacuumed the whole house, cleaned the bathrooms, tidied the garage, brought some stuff in from the backyard for winter, spent 20 minutes playing typing games online (in home position), one had to practice guitar for an hour, the other had to write a story for an hour, and neither is allowed to achieve less than A- on a school test or assignment until the end of 2010.

And they went for it!

Kids aren't all that bad these days...

Quote from: MFA on November 12, 2010, 08:24:38 AM
I identify with most of those except we never had a game system--I envied the kids with the Atari 2600.

My kids asked for the day off school today.  I acquiesced--as long as they tidied, dusted, and vacuumed the whole house, cleaned the bathrooms, tidied the garage, brought some stuff in from the backyard for winter, spent 20 minutes playing typing games online (in home position), one had to practice guitar for an hour, the other had to write a story for an hour, and neither is allowed to achieve less than A- on a school test or assignment until the end of 2010.

And they went for it!

Kids aren't all that bad these days...

I am impressed Mercy...you have really great kids. :) :) :)

How about calculators?  We never had calculators when I went to school.  Algebra, calculus, trig............all done by hand and with a slide rule. 

Writing a report for school actually meant WRITING the report.  With a pencil.  With your fingers.  No typewriter (because you probably  didn't know how to use one, and your parents didn't have one anyway).

Gas? 30 cents a gallon.  Cigarettes? 30 cents a pack.  General admission to an NBA basketball game?  Two bucks. 

Bottled water?   :)) :)) :))  The biggest scam in history.  If the kids were outside playing with other neighborhood kids, which was the norm, the nearest garden hose worked just fine.

Video games?  Wii?  PS3?  We had these things called BOARD GAMES.  Monopoly, Life, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, Racko, Operation, Risk, checkers................Milton Bradley was our best friend.

Television at home was a 23 inch black and white (until we got a COLOR TV in the late 60s), and we had five TV channels.  ABC, NBC, CBS, the local TV station, and PBS.  No cable.  No satellite.

Families ate around the dining room table, together, every night of the week, usually as soon as dad got home from work.  Mom was already home.  Her job description was "homemaker".  Dad was the breadwinner and the King of the house.  Mom cleaned and cooked and shopped and sewed and was the Queen of the house.

Fast food was a big treat, maybe four or five times a YEAR.  Eating in a sit-down restaurant was even less frequent.

A big family adventure was going to the drive-in theatre maybe once or twice a year, with Kool-Aid and a couple of big grocery paper bags of popcorn that mom prepared at home.

Discipline?  Since I was the only boy, I was the only one that got paddled.  My two sisters never got spanked.  When mom said "just wait until your father gets home", I knew I was in deep shit.  Mom would meet dad at the door when he got home from work, tell him what I had done, off came dad's belt, and I got smacked with the belt until I pretended that it hurt.  No harm done.  I got the message.

Kids today don't know what they are MISSING.  Life was SIMPLE back in the 60s and early 70s, if you were a kid.  We never realized how good we had it back then, until much later.   

Quote from: AmericanFlyer on November 13, 2010, 06:20:22 PM

A big family adventure was going to the drive-in theatre maybe once or twice a year, with Kool-Aid and a couple of big grocery paper bags of popcorn that mom prepared at home.

I did not see my first drive in movie until I was almost 13...they passed me off as under 12.  It was the Aristocrats by Disney.  And yes we had the grocery bags of popcorn and water....Koolaid could spill and stain the carpet.. :) :)

You had a 23" Band W TV? Damn, you guys were rich, we had a 12", with three channels, PBS was only on one hour a day and it was strictly for school.

You make a good point about how good we had it.
I guess the difference was family, we spent time together, doing things together.
Now parents drop the kids off at activities, soccer, etc, and when they're home, everyone is in their own World, from blogs to games or texting.

The family unit, is no longer a unit of cohesiveness, but rather fluid like water, it doesn't need one another to be complete.

Quote from: Solar on November 13, 2010, 06:50:12 PM


The family unit, is no longer a unit of cohesiveness, but rather fluid like water, it doesn't need one another to be complete.

Not at this house...I would be incomplete without you to harass spend time with me. :-*

Quote from: Solars Toy on November 13, 2010, 07:08:01 PM
Not at this house...I would be incomplete without you to harass spend time with me. :-*

Thats Herass! Or rather yerass,  :-* :))

It's a long way from the 1950s.

Grew up with a 13" B&W, no video games, and didn't go to a drive-in until I was about 20.

I remember the slide rule--my dad had one, but I never knew how to use it.

Quote from: MFA on November 14, 2010, 08:32:04 PM
Grew up with a 13" B&W, no video games, and didn't go to a drive-in until I was about 20.

I remember the slide rule--my dad had one, but I never knew how to use it.

I hated the slide rule, never did grasp the concept, I think only two kids in the entire school used one, and they were the freaks, not so much smart, but freaks.

But to be fair, it was the Calif. public school system, a place where no one learned.

Quote from: Solar on November 15, 2010, 06:49:47 AM
I hated the slide rule, never did grasp the concept, I think only two kids in the entire school used one, and they were the freaks, not so much smart, but freaks.

But to be fair, it was the Calif. public school system, a place where no one learned.

Be glad you didn't attend Detroit Public Schools. At least you can read this reply.