The Good ol' days
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 25 miles to school every morning...uphill BOTH ways...through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs ...to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a straight-A average, despite their full-time, after-school job at the local textile mill ...
where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from
starving to death! 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 library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!
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!
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 messed it all up!
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" and the graphics sucked! 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!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating!
All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a
hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!
Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15
channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! 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 and 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 b%^$^!
And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a friggin' fire .. imagine that! If we wanted
popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the
stove forever like an idiot. That's exactly what I'm talking about! You
kids today have got it too easy. Youre spoiled.
You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980.
Ha Ha! I hope you feel better! I'm only 24 (ok almost 25) and I remember those good ol' days! I hated waiting a week for cartoons! My mom made me answer the phone for incase she didn't want to talk to who called. I love caller id! I remember the hours of research at the library! I didn't even have the internet until this year...how did I live without it? I did have all the new game systems as a kid though. My dad couldn't resist them!
This is even way ahead of when I was a kid. More like my dks age.I fit into the first category "adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious
diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking 25 miles to school every morning...uphill BOTH ways...through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs ...to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a straight-A average, despite their full-time, after-school job at the local textile mill ...
where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from
starving to death!"I just thought that it was really cute.
Hey I remember the days when your mom kicked you out the front door in the morning there was no sitting under her feet waiting to be entertianed all day. and bored was a word we learned not to say because if you said you were bored she would find somthing for you to do like wash dishes or vaccum or whatever needed to be done. my poor kids though are getting a little taste of the good ol days because we just moved and havent got the cable set up yet so the only cartoons they get are on saturday morning.
I was so good at playing Burger Time! That was the game right there!! I remember when my mom got her very first VCR. It was like $500 and the remote that came with it plugged into it so you still had to stand right up on it just to play a movie. So I'm not really sure why it even came with one. 
I also remember our kitchen phone had a REALLY long phone cord so we could go all over the kitchen to talk. That was long before cordless phones. The bad thing was if you let go of the receiver it would go flying across the kitchen and usually hit someone in the head. 
Oh I got one. Our very first computer was a Commodore 64. You couldn't do anything on that thing except type. Basically you had to be an IT expert to do anything on it. Yes I agree kids do have it very easy these days. My daughter would go crazy without her satellite TV and her XBox 360. Man I also remember it was actually safe to go outside and play. During the summertime we would wake up really early grab our bikes and not come home until dinner time. Then after dinner go play until it was dark. You know we didn't have all of the stuff that kids have today, but it sure was fun!
man I remember our first microwave...like 1979 and we all stood around and watch it defrost a pound of frozen hamberger like it was a new television show or something!
That thing cost about $500 and it was the CHEAP model!
Anyone remember centipede?
mommachris
we got our first VCR when I was in 7th or 8th grade......my parents wanted to wait until the technology got cheaper!!! Our first computer was something a company got rid of and the computer was the size of a lazy boy chair (minus the nice cushioned seat--but we could hook up 3 monitors to it!!! LOL) The screens were all green and black and the floppy disks were the size of a dinner plate.
I love these remember when posts. Got a couple of my own, b & w tv huge upright with a 13 inch screen, only had to walk a mile to school, uphill one way though Girls had to wear dresses, in the harsh winter we we allowed to wear slacks UNDER our dresses and if we wanted to hang upside down from the jungle gym you wore shorts UNDER your dresses. Speaking of school, you did't dare disrespect a teacher by any means, because of the paddle or the big ruler for cracking one on the fingers, head or wherever the teacher intended. We had to use our imagination for playtime, and to me this was the best of times because all the neighborhood kids would get together in a vacant field to play softball or we would play tag, hide and seek, put on plays, catch fireflies in a jar, sled ride, cardboard ride down a hill, marbles, jacks, red rover, hit ball, god the list goes on. One of my favorite activities, was doing the mud mixing and slathering it on bricks for the best dang cake, although one time I got into bigtime trouble with the mud mixing, we were visiting a great aunt on her farm in Maryland (where I was born) I was only about 7, anyhow I went into the milk house and used the cream with the mud. Picture shows were .25 cents, loved the drive-in movies, sock hops, 45 rpm records. Wringer washing machines, I even remember my mom having a washboard and sprinkling our all cotton clothes with water and rolling them and putting in a plastic bag to be ironed. Chores, we actually had to do chores before we could do anything else and if you chose not to, you got the switch from a nearby tree. Backyard pools were unheard of unless you were some rich person and I do mean rich, so a creek or a river was summertime fun for me. We only got new clothes at the start of school, christmas and a new outfit at easter. Meals were cooked, no fast food, I remember the first time I seen pizza...ewww thought it was the most gross looking thing I had ever seen, that is until I tasted it. The 50's and 60's, a lifetime ago...Patticake, thanks for this thread I got to go back in time this morning to visit my childhood. Sorry this was so long.
My kids HATE getting me on the subject of when I was a kid and I'm only 28.
We live in the country and have a huge yard so I make them play outside when it's nice. If they complain about that I tell them to be grateful, when my parents were stationed in Germany I wasn't allowed out to play unless my mom or a brother over 10 was with me, Fort Knox adopted that rule at least for a while right before we left in the early 90s and then I had to take my younger siblings to the playground.
When they complain about me not letting them watch TV I can tell them about having one channel in English that sucked and no VCR. I'm a TV Nazi so I really like this one. 
When they get mad because I won't let them play computer games they get to hear about how we had no computer. That one got a "how did you use the internet without one" from my oldest. 
My kids can't imagine life without all the stuff we have, my oldest didn't know what a cassette tape was until he got to kindergarten because we don't own a player.
Oh man do I remember those old days!!!!!
Your post made me laugh so hard. I can relate to every single thing you said!!!
These days I agree that kids are spoiled!! (mine included)!
I remember when we ate breakfast in the morning, and went to play out in the neighborhood all day, and only came back to the house to eat supper at night and to sleep. (They don't do THAT anymore either)!!! 
When you wanted to watch the tv, you actually DID have to get up and turn the knob on the tv to change the channel. None of this "gimmie the remote" crap!!! 
Everything was simple then, not enough things for the kids these days to have to use their heads for (other than a hat rack!!)
I miss those old days. JMO What's yours???????
Remember the national anthem at midnight, then all the t.v. stations went off? And how cool call waiting was? I remember going into my mom's office and people smoking at their desks! How gross. And people at school got paddles regularly.
hellie0h's school comment made me think of this. It is a test 8th graders had to pass at the turn of the last century. I am quite positive some of this stuff is not even taught in High School now nuch less middle school!
http://mwhodges.home.att.net/1895-test.htm
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%