A letter to todays kids from the over 30 crowd

[bartongrl1]

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 BOTH ways ..
blah blah blah.

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. ( Do you even know what the dewey decimal system is??)

There was no e-mail. 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 MP3s 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 @#*% 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 Boxes 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
*** 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 or go build a frigging 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.
You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980.

Regards,
The over 30 Crowd

[skinski]

Oh I love it ! lol

[bartongrl1]

Let me go one better. I was born before plastic, automatic washers, clothes dryers, and we had the first tv in our little town and had 2 channels to watch.

But we played baseball, swam in the river, hiked in the woods, rode bicycles for miles. And we were a lot healthier back then IMO. I dont remember seeing overweight kids in grade school.

Reading books was a great pasttime back then and I still read at least 2 novels a week. I learned to play poker, spades and pinochle, and euchre.

And back then we got our butts if we needed it. And believe me, whatever we did to get our butts , we never did it again. lol

Families had dinner together and actually talked to each other. We went to church on Sunday and had a big Sunday dinner afterwards.

To me, those were better times. We were much more creative and used our imaginations to entertain ourselves with games we made up.

They say the baby boomer generation has been the most creative yet.

[skinski]

Yep....back when I was a lad we played outside. Cowboys and Indians or if we had enough folk we'd get up a game of baseball on a Sunday afternoon. And the parents would play as well ! We didn't have tv's or stereos in our bedrooms...bedrooms was a place to go do ya homework after school and to sleep in at night .
Also when changing tv stations , someone would have to go out side and turn the antenna to clear up the channel .
When getting home from school you had chores to do , be it hoeing the garden , suckerin tobacco or something easy like mowing the yard ,with a push mower to boot ! And we didn't get no dang allowance for doing so.We were part of the family and it was expected of us.......god , those were the days .

[SirWilliam58]

Yep, I remember those days...lol I specially remember when dad got the first automatic antenna rotater it was cool, didn't have to go outside and turn it no more, at least til it pulled the wire lose...hehe

[bartongrl1]

Yep we got one of those antaenna towers and it turned itself too, and every time it stormed, the lightning struck ours. Talk about excitement, and didnt have to leave home or pay for tickets either.

Cowboys and indians, lol we tied someone to a tree and danced around them for hours.

No makeup for girls till we were 16. Then we could date too, but by gosh you had to be in by curfew or you went nowhere for months.

We had drive in movies. And sock hops. My thing was roller skating every saturday nite.

We were a physical bunch back then. Even us girls were strong and could outrun most of the boys. And we could fight too. Rofl. We didnt slap the boys, we punched them. Guess as you noticed, I was a tomboy back then.

Got my first flat bottomed wooden rowboat at 8 years old. And could swim like a fish. I wouldnt dream of letting my grandkids on a boat alone at that age lol.

Everyday after school i was on the river. Unless of course there was a ball game.

[skinski]

You and my wife would have got along just dandy Barton....hehehe

[bartongrl1]

Yep, then she knows those WERE the good old days. lol