Yeah, take THAT ya fuckin punk kids...

Stole this from ODFU, so STFU if you've seen it before :twofinger

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 . .
. through year 'round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs . . . to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a Straight-A average, despite their full- time, after-school job at the local textile mill . . . where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!

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 like 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'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!

And talk of about hardships? You couldn't just download xxx! You had to steal it from your brother or bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! Those were your options!

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, 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 ass! 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 ass 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 brats!

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 Jiffy Pop 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!!!!!

It's all relative.

Theres downsides to all that fancy shit.

Atari? what to fuck is that?

I din't werk in a woolen mill fer 35¢ but I did work in a cheese factory @ $1.25, and I watched Rin Tin Tin in B&W on saturday morning , when it snowed they put chains on the school busses

we got 2 tv stations unless we wanted to climb on the roof and point out antenna toward Montreal then we could get a bunch of French stations

My dad bought a brand new 1957 Chevy BelAir with an automatic transmission it din't have airbags, it din't have power steering, power brakes, seat belts, it had a defroster, vent windows and an AM radio

we lernt to use guns and hunt by the time we were 10 years old

we had party line phones and you had to know which ring was yours

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Originally posted by RandyO
when it snowed they put chains on the school busses

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They stopped doing that when I was in junior high and suddenly we got endless more snow days. Damn kids and ther snow days.

Haha, saturday morning cartoons! And when the cartoons were over, bowling would be on! I remember getting up at like 530am and plopping myself in front of the TV in the living room (which you had to push buttons on the TV to change channels) and watching saturday morning cartoons all morning until bowling came on. :P

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Originally posted by JeffL
Haha, saturday morning cartoons! And when the cartoons were over, bowling would be on! I remember getting up at like 530am and plopping myself in front of the TV in the living room (which you had to push buttons on the TV to change channels) and watching saturday morning cartoons all morning until bowling came on. :P

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push buttons, we has a dial to turn, and I don't remember but a couple cartoons, we had westerns, Rin-tin -tin, sky king, the texas ranger, etc.

and Captain Kangaroo

Yeah, we had one of those as well. A whole 13 channels to choose from. It was pretty fancy, you had another switch to choose between using the antenna, or the cable connection.

This is great...

Cable??? we didn't have no stinking cable.

We had 4 stations.. ABC, NBC, CBS and UAB.

My kids 2 and 6 aren't happy without a full day of DVD's on the wide screen and or

"Take me somewhere"

today we are acquiescing for a fun trip to Children's Medical Center.

"When the Gods are angry they give you what you wish for"

lol the three networks maybe... almost always one wouldn't come in. pbs was my friend. capt kangaroo and zoom. yes jeff cartoons till bowling! those were the days!

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Originally posted by blackvfr
lol the three networks maybe... almost always one wouldn't come in.

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pfft...and if it started to rain during your show you were fucked!!

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Originally posted by Jaynnus
pfft...and if it started to rain during your show you were fucked!!

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obviously you didn't have a little sister. There's something about their composition that makes them the perfect antenna extension.

I was born in 1966 and grew up just outside London. I don't consider myself that old, but to put things in perspective:

I remember only having a black and white TV. We had 3 channels BBC1, BBC2 and ITV. On saturday afternoons there would be horse racing on all 3. On saturday nights there would be soccer on all 3. I remember watching snooker in black and white. Famous quote from BBC snooker coverage "For those of you watching in black and white, the pink ball is behind the green ball"

My first real job was on the record and tapes counter at Woolworth's for $1.18 an hour. I worked all day saturday to pay my $10 a week bike payment. I worked a paper round one night a week for $3 to buy a week's worth of gas for the bike.

School busses? I walked 3 miles to and from school. No such thing as a snow day in England unless the school boiler broke.

I used to go down to the local community center as a kid and pay 10c to sit on the floor with 200 other kids and watch "Flash Gordon" on a projector screen in B + W.

The first VCR I ever saw was in 1980 at a friend's house. We watched tom and jerry cartoons all day Christmas day on it.

My parents bought me a computer in 1978. A BBC micro. It had 32k of main storage, an audio tape to load programs and save programs, and it hooked into a television screen like a video game does. It was a shade under $800. About a months salary for my father at the time. Thanks Dad.

I remember going to the store to buy my parents cigarettes with a note from them. I was about 6 at that time.

I remember leaving the house with my friends at about 9am most summer mornings and coming back home at dark. They didn't worry where I was or what I was doing. I wasn't stupid enough to go with a stranger. Local mothers would watch out for ALL the kids in the neighborhood, not just their own.

I went to a high school built in 1558. I could see the gates of the old Vincent factory from my classroom. I even did some shop classes in the Vincent engine assembly room. I used to sit on Vincent's "Super Nero" Bonneville land speed record breaker bike at lunchtimes and bought my second bike (Suzuki GP100) from George Brown junior, who's father was the rider and builder of Super Nero.


http://www.mindspring.com/~bigsid/nero.jpeg

Triumphs, BSAs and Nortons were the bikes of the day in my home town.

Memories, I could go on forever, but I won't.

derek

Yeah, no kidding Degsy. When "I was growing up", us kids would hop on our one speed bikes, and pedal off to destinations unknown, and so long as we were back by nightfall, no ones parents were really too concerned. We'd spend all day out in the woods jumping streams, building forts and throwing rocks at each other (I've got a scar on my head to prove the rock throwing!).

Now you see kids 11, 12, 13 years old spending all day on the computer after school. Hell, when I was 12, it was home from school then go bike riding with friends, or go play out in the woods with the next door neighbor, or if his parents werent home, we'd pull out his dads collection of Hustler and Penthouse and oogle that for awhile.

And hell, that was only in the late 80's/early 90's, what a difference a decade makes.

pfft... y'all still had it easy. if you were living in third world country back then in some area where there was no electricity you would think it was medieval time, using torch made from the tree tar to go frog hunting at night. what the heck is television.

i've seen the airplane but they have 2 propellers.

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Originally posted by Kham
pfft... y'all still had it easy. if you were living in third world country back then in some area where there was no electricity you would think it was medieval time, using torch made from the tree tar to go frog hunting at night. what the heck is television.

i've seen the airplane but they have 2 propellers.

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I wasn't saying things were tough. We were comfortable financially withlut being rich by any means. Just reminiscing on how different things are now, that's all.

Is your quote above from personal experience, or just remarking on the lives of some people?

derek

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Originally posted by Degsy
I wasn't saying things were tough. We were comfortable financially withlut being rich by any means. Just reminiscing on how different things are now, that's all.

Is your quote above from personal experience, or just remarking on the lives of some people?

derek

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hey Deg, i didn't even read thru your post so my response wasn't to you but just to chip in the back then.

the quote is personal experience.

and you're the same age as my sister. :)

we didn't get ABC, out neighbors did, we weren't high enuf on the hill to get Mt Washington, , on a cool clear nite we might be able to get ABC outa Schanectady

UHF wasn't around then, only 2-13,

we got CBS & NBC , CTVfrench & CTV english CBCfrench &CBC english , that's it

i kill this topic. i shouldn't say the frog hunt was hard part. it was actually the fun part. i think the living today is the hard part. scratch... i mean the bill payment.

randy..sounds like we might be in the "same" generation.....we only got one or two channels on the tv....and if u actually wanted to SEE what was on one of us had to be the TV ground fault...just hang on to the rabbit ears for an hour or so...
safety?..what the "F" was that?....i remember sitting in the car driving along with my dad and my uncle and wondering where the road was...no...it wasnt foggy!!...it was 2 chain smokers having at it......also i remember that seat belts hadnt been invented..and seeing kids snoozing in the back window of the old edsel hitting top speed on rt 66 going west....yup times have changed....

We had one TV in the house, right in the living room. We got three stations CBS from Burlington, ABC off Mount Washington (who else remembers the guy that used to spend the entire winter in the weather station with his cat - you could watch his sanity slip as the winter progressed), and PBS. My parents had two remotes for the TV - Me and my sister. If we didn't like what was on TV we read. I've figured out that no matter how many channels you have there are still times when there is nothing on...

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Originally posted by SSearchVT
We had one TV in the house, right in the living room. We got three stations CBS from Burlington, ABC off Mount Washington (who else remembers the guy that used to spend the entire winter in the weather station with his cat - you could watch his sanity slip as the winter progressed), and PBS. My parents had two remotes for the TV - Me and my sister. If we didn't like what was on TV we read. I've figured out that no matter how many channels you have there are still times when there is nothing on...

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3 stations in burlington?, pbs? yer just a young little snapper, eh.

I don't know which weatherman is funnier, Bert Verdan the Atlantic Weather Man or Marty Angstrom

Oh man, my favorite was my aunts old 197x station wagon/land boat, with the rear window that rolled all the way down, and the jump seats in the way back that faced rear and your feet sat down in the spare tire well or whatever it was. Good times.

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Originally posted by RandyO
3 stations in burlington?, pbs? yer just a young little snapper, eh.

I don't know which weatherman is funnier, Bert Verdan the Atlantic Weather Man or Marty Angstrom

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" We're all high here on Mount Washington"

People on ODFU know how to use terms like diatribe? :poke: :D

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Originally posted by RandyO
3 stations in burlington?, pbs? yer just a young little snapper, eh.

I don't know which weatherman is funnier, Bert Verdan the Atlantic Weather Man or Marty Angstrom

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Not the big city of Burlington - it was Bradford... 30 miles in any direction for a movie theater or McDonalds...