But I survived....

Stolen from a friend, but oh so appropriate...

"If you are 36, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

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!! (how many of you know the Dewey Decimal System???)

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 freakin' 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.

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, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

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!

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!
Regards,
The Over 35 Crowd

I forgot about how hard it used to be

Miranda Lambert "Automatic"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ksWKOy665o

yip Trembles thems were the breaks...if you didnt like it you got a kick up the bum.

I'm like Troubles...I'd forgotten how hard we had it in those days...but damn we had a good life then and used to have a lot of fun.

I listen to a lot of music and find that autobiographical memories linked to music remain so rich and textured with their power to transport us back in time and space. I find that I am 'transported' back to the time often when I hear a song, a song with the power of to trigger vivid memories of days long gone. They were 'our' good old days and I regularly sit down and wish I could turn the clock back to those untroubled times...times when we didn't have a care in the world and every girl was good looking and a potential girlfriend.

So true Vince

I really don't believe the kids of today have it so good. I was born in 1942 and grew up in the 50's and 60's. There are sooo many thing we did in those days. Like entertaining a girl in the hay mow. Moving the outhouse back a few feet (yup...We still had a few outhouses in those days). And all the misschief we could get into (what I couldn't think of my brother could). Time swimming in the river not to mention hours fishing the same river.

The list is too long to print here, but those that grew up in the COUNTRY in the 50's and 60's know what I'm talking about. We had a blast.

Yeup Bushy and it was called living life. Now they call it reality TV. Putting people on homesteads and seein if they can make a wood stove cook stew, for TV entertainment. There's still people that live actual life tho, and you'll never find them in the city unless they need a new pair of shoes. There's kind of a mix of that here and some wanna'be's too. Wish I still had the time I used to have when I was a kid, it seemed forever. For me it wasn't a river bank to sit and watch the sunset but more like a hill top watching the vultures go by....sounds weird but I loving watching them surf the thermals. We used to go to San Diego and watch the pelicans do the same thing on ocean swells almost touching the swell with wingtips stretching out.

When there's no fuel for imagination and no time to develop one, we've taken the easy way out and decided to play with our phones like dumb sheep following the other one through the fence and interestingly enough we even get hit by cars not paying attention.....I guess we are just dumb sheep. I don't include myself of course...or anyone of you but those who spend their every moment on the phone texting, they bother me. They've lost everything they think they've gained, without knowing it.


Suz

Beg to differ on 2 points...

WE were the original TV remotes in our house...the Old Man would make us get up to change the channels for him.

And stay there until he found something he wanted to watch. Which basically made us his TV guide as well. Granted there weren't 1500 channels to scroll through. Hell, I recall using UHF and VHF DIALS to find something he wanted to watch.

I remember a time before we had a television. I also remember my grandfather building his first one. It had an eight inch round screen and was housed in a furniture quality cabinet that was beautiful. He was also the best blacksmith I ever knew.

Explain to your kids that you, as a kid, used to sit in front of your radio staring at it while you were listening to it.

Seems we were preparing for TV even then.