The Spoiled Under-30 Crowd

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! Yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of stuff 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 Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

1. 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!

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!

3. There were no MP3's or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the 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!

4. We didn't have fancy stuff like call waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

5. 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, a collections agent, you just didn't know! You had to pick it up and take your chances mister!

6. 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 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!

7. When you went to the movie theater there was no such thing as stadium seating. All the seats were the same height. If a tall guy or some old lady with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just out of luck!

8. Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no on screen menu! You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! 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!

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

10. When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked-in, we were stuck to the wall with a cord... 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!

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