Wednesday, November 19, 2008

The spoiled under 25 crowd

The original title of this was "The Spoiled Under 30 Crowd." But I'm under 30 and I can actually relate to very much of this (esp the part about making mixed tapes!). So I'm changing it to 'under 25.' Enjoy!

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 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 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 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 would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% 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'. 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 butt 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 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.

Regards,
The over 30 25 Crowd

UPDATE:


Paul from Kirkland posted this video link in his comment and I thought it was simply so fitting and hilarious I had to post it here. THANKS, PAUL!!!



15 comments:

Kelly said...

yeah, sorry, we had email when i was a kid ;)

Cristi said...

I actually miss library card catalogs & the busy signal. The first time I used the internet was in college. The information highway & technology in general is a wonderful thing, yet this post made me feel nostalgic.

Talk about a generation gap, my mother still doesn't use the atm or electronic withdrawal at the bank.

Anonymous said...

true that! I wonder how different my high school experience would've been with facebook. I'm thinking a lot.

Anonymous said...

I can remember when we got our first computer, I was in 3rd grade. I grew up with 9 channels (no cartoon network, no MTV, no nikalodeon and when they switched NBC from channel 4 to 11 we were SCREWED) on hand-me-down tv's I even had a black and white without a channel changer for a while.

Video game were vetoed. We had one gameboy once that we had to share (can you imagine the fights?). I remember playing PONG at my grandpa's.

I still own my first ever CD/stereo system, granted it won't play "burned" CD's which is all I own currently but it is GREAT for the radio.

I begged for a cell phone (I drove a '67 mustang from Tiburon to Sebastapol 4 times a week without one, that doesn't seem safe) when I got one so did my 13 year old sister, NOT FAIR!!

I still write letters but love email and instant messaging, texting and caller ID really is a godsend with all those crazy stalkers out there.

Kathleen @ ForgingAhead said...

Takes me back to the good old days when I was a petty thief swiping LPs from the record store...oh wait, I didn't do that.

Anonymous said...

Here's a video clip of Louis CK, on a related topic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbIGbZ6gq_Y

Sarah said...

Paul, that is AWESOME!!! I LOVE IT! I posted it because I heart it so much. :) Thanks!

Sarah said...

Oh and Cristi, I miss the library card catalogs too. :)

Nate said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Vanessa said...

Sorry Sarah, that one above was me. I keep commenting under Nate's name. Whoops!!

Anyways, here is what I wanted to say: I love it!! I would just like to say I am part of the unspoiled crowd (in between 25 and 30). I remember clearly life without the internet and cell phones!

Jocelyn Wong Neill said...

yes i too am in the only semi-spoiled 25-30 crowd. I remember when my 6th grade best friend's dad got a CD player. that was the first CD player I'd ever seen! I didn't have Atari but we played the original Nintendo DS at my cousin's house. Duck Hunt! I didn't get my first cell phone until the middle of COLLEGE! thanks for the post, and the video link. omg HILARIOUS! I think flying in the air is amazing too!

rocketpants said...

Ah yes...i remember when the internet started coming around and trying to figure out what people meant when they said: cyberspace. Too much information all the time has made people really impatient. That is my observation.

Carolina John said...

Too true! spoiled young punks. Hoodlums, all of them. We didn't have it hard, just not as easy as the under 25's.

Rainmaker said...

Awesome post...the TV Guide book (actually, my parents only got the newspaper version, which sat on the little table next to the TV all week until we got the new paper), no caller ID, the card catalog. All things that had faded into my memory.

Chris Westall said...

I didn't have cable in my neighborhood until I was 12.

Brutal!

I'm old!