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About the Good Old Days
(1980's)

(The following is an email going around, but just in case you're the last person on Earth to receive it...)   

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, like those stories about walking twenty-five miles to school going uphill both ways. I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way I was going to sound like an old geezer telling kids how hard I had it. 

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of fifty, 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 dang Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today don't know how good you've got it.

When I was a kid, we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the dang library and look it up ourselves--in the card catalog! (do you even know what a card catalog is? Didn't think so!) 

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter. With a pen! Then you had to walk all the way out to the road and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there! 

There were no MP3's or Napster! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the dang 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 mess 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 didn't know! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! 

When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked in, we were stuck to the wall with a 7 foot cord that ran to the phone--not the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom, guess what we had to do.....hang up and talk to them later. 

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 "Pong". And the graphics were horrible! 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! 

There was no fancy cable television back then. We only had three channels and there was no onscreen menu--you had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on. And if Dad wanted to watch Bonanza or Barney Miller, you could forget watching anything else because there was just one TV in the house.  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! 

And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove, imagine that!  If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid JiffyPop thing or a pan with HOT oil and real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever like an idiot. 

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!