The "Spoiled" Under 30 Crowd

[Gellis Indigo]

If you are 30 or older you will 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 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 catalogue!!


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!

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 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'. 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!
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 rat-bastards!


And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat
Something up we had to use the stove ... Imagine that!


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

[Margaret]

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!




My daughter stared at me in mute horror when I told her that we just had Saturday morning cartoons. *rotfl*

[Catherine]

I would just like to say that I am lovingly in that under 30 crowd. Heck, I'm in the under 20 crowd. I would just ask that you don't call all of us spoiled.

But, I too grew up on an Atari 2600. And, honestly, those are still some of the best games I played as a kid. I'm a huge fan of Pit Fall, and Land-Air-Sea battle. You know, the one where you could be tanks, or have battles where the ships shot at planes up above, and the planes shot at ships on the bottom of the screen? Also a big frogger fan.

Oh, and my Atari still works.*rotfl*

I still have 7 channels at my house. When the reception is good. That's right. We still have a freakin' large intenna on the roof of my house, that I have to go and fix every time there's wind.

But, yes. I do have internet. Dial up. It's impossible for me to get anything faster. You know what that means? It's faster to go to the library, which is 20 minutes away, to look things up. It just isn't eonomically friendly to use the gas to get there. And you have to wait over half an hour to get a you-tube video to play.

Getting songs off the internet is out of the question. We've still got the CDs and casette tapes filed in alphabetical order so we can find them when we want to play music. The records, too. Hell, we have music like 'Alice's Restaraunt' on some 7 in. or so roll of film, and I don't even know what to call those.

Oh yeah, the dial-up internet also means that I can't get phone calls while I'm online. So call waiting doesn't do any good. If it even worked at the house. My lines don't support it. The caller-ID is pointless, too.

Yes, I had a microwave. One that was in the wall. It didn't work well. I think I had a tv dinner MAYBE three times in my life. When I was at someone else's house. Where there might have been a working microwave.

This is the way I was raised, and am still being raised. There's a reason I only check my e-mail once a week when I'm home, and a reason I drop off the face of the earth when my school goes on breaks.

I would just ask that you not bunch us all together. Some of us are still growing up the way you were.



Thanks,
The special ones

[UnicornBee]

I remember Saturday morning cartoons. And Sunday. Dad would watch them with us. And I'm only mid 20s!
I remember pre-internet and no remote controls. And a paper TV Guide.
No MP3 players. Oh how I loved that Atari. We still have it too!
The roulette of the phone call was always fun. Thats how I learned the proper way to answer a phone call when you weren't sure who was on the other end.
The card catalogue...I was so happy when the library went to digital.

[Gellis Indigo]

I would just ask that you not bunch us all together. Some of us are still growing up the way you were.


I posted this in the "Fluffy And Funny" section because it is a joke. If I'd meant for it to be taken seriously, I'd have placed it in the "We've Got Issues" section.

I'm sorry you took offense. I still think it's funny.

[Bronya]

Talk about not knowing who was calling "back in the day"...I am so old I remember party lines. If you lived in a big town you could have 5-6 people on the same line. How did you know you could use the phone? You had to pick it up and listen for someone talking.l If you heard voices, you said sorry, hung up and waited. If you were lucky, they only stayed on a little while longer. If they weren't that nice, they kept talking and you kept checking. I will never for get the day we got a private line. Boy did we feel rich.

[Emma]

This was one of my favorite songs back in around 2002:

You see, I come from a time in the nineteen-hundred-and-seventies when computers were used for two things - to either go to the moon, or play Pong... nothing in between. Y'see, you didn't need a fancy operating system to play Pong, and the men who went to the moon--God Bless 'em--did it with no mouse, and a plain text-only black-and-white screen, and 32 kilobytes of RAM.

But then 'round 'bout the late 70's, home computers started to do a little more than play Pong... very little more. Like computers started to play games, and balance checkbooks, and why you could play Zaxxon on your Apple II, or... write a book! All with a computer that had 32 kilobytes of RAM! It was good enough to go to the moon, it was good enough for you.

It was a golden time. A time before Windows, a time before mouses, a time before the internet and bloatware, and a time... before every OS sucked.

*sigh*

Well, way back in the olden times,
my computer worked for me.
I'd laugh and play, all night and day,
on Zork I, II and III.

The Amiga, VIC-20 and the Sinclair II,
The TRS 80 and the Apple II,
they did what they were supposed to do,
wasn't much... but it was enough.

But then Xerox made a prototype,
Steve Jobs came on the scene,
read "Of Mice and Menus," Windows, Icons
a trash, and a bitmap screen.

Well Stevie said to Xerox,
"Boys, turn your heads and cough."
And when no-one was looking,
he ripped their interfaces off.

Stole every feature that he had seen,
put it in a cute box with a tiny little screen,
Mac OS 1 ran that machine,
only cost five thousand bucks.

But it was slow, it was buggy,
so they wrote it again,
And now they're up to OS 10,
they'll charge you for the Beta, then charge you again,
but the Mac OS still sucks.

Every OS wastes your time,
from the desktop to the lap,
Everything since Apple Dos,
Just a bunch of crap.

From Microsoft, to Macintosh,
to Lih-- lie-- lih-- lie... nux,
Every computer crashes,
'cause every OS sucks.

Well then Microsoft jumped in the game,
copied Apple's interface, with an OS named,
"Windows 3.1" - it was twice as lame,
but the stock price rose and rose.

Then Windows 95, then 98,
man solitaire never ran so great,
and every single version came out late,
but I guess that's the way it goes.

But that bloatware'll crash and delete your work,
NT, ME, man, none of 'em work.
Bill Gates may be richer than Captain Kirk,
but the Windows OS blows!
And sucks!
At the same time!

I'd trade it in, yeah right... for what?
It's top of the line from the Compuhut.
The fridge, stove and toaster, never crash on me,
I should be able to get online, without a PHD.

My phone doesn't take a week to boot it,
my TV doesn't crash when I mute it,
I miss ASCII text, and my floppy drive,
I wish VIC-20 was still alive...

But it ain't the hardware, man.

It's just that every OS sucks... and blows.

Now there's lih-nux or lie-nux,
I don't know how you say it,
or how you install it, or use it, or play it,
or where you download it, or what programs run,
but lih-nux, or lie-nux, don't look like much fun.

However you say it, it's getting great press,
though how it survives is anyone's guess,
If you ask me, it's a great big mess,
for elitist, nerdy shmucks.

"It's free!" they say, if you can get it to run,
the Geeks say, "Hey, that's half the fun!"
Yeah, but I got a girlfriend, and things to get done,
the Linux OS SUCKS.
(I'm sorry to say it, but it does.)

Every OS wastes your time,
from the desktop to the lap,
Everything since the abacus,
Just a bunch of crap.

From Microsoft, to Macintosh,
to lih-lie-lih-lie... nux.
Every computer crashes,
'cause every OS sucks.

[Patsy the Loomer]

SNIPPITY
Hell, we have music like 'Alice's Restaraunt' on some 7 in. or so roll of film, and I don't even know what to call those.
SNIP


That's most likely a tape reel (not film) from a reel-to-reel machine, same idea as a cassette tape, but earlier. My dad's has variable speeds, so you can make your own version of The Chipmunks with whatever you have in the cabinet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reel-to-reel_audio_tape_recording

(another under-30er)

[daBaroness]

Talk about not knowing who was calling "back in the day"...I am so old I remember party lines. If you lived in a big town you could have 5-6 people on the same line. How did you know you could use the phone? You had to pick it up and listen for someone talking.l If you heard voices, you said sorry, hung up and waited. If you were lucky, they only stayed on a little while longer. If they weren't that nice, they kept talking and you kept checking. I will never for get the day we got a private line. Boy did we feel rich.

Amen sista!

We had a party line, too. And my grandparents had a party line at their cottage that rang at both parties' houses. We too felt quite something when we got a private line. And remember telephone exchanges? Ours was GArfield1-7760!

I remember having four channels - ABC, NBC, CBS and CBC (we got the Canadian station in Windsor, Ontario). Black and white with rabbit ears. Cartoons on Saturday mornings, followed by American Bandstand. Weekday late-afternoon kid's shows with live hosts including "Bozo the Clown," "The Popeye Club with Poopdeck Paul," and the "The Soupy Sales Show." And local shows like "Dialing for Dollars" and "The Afternoon Matinee." And let's not forget the morning shows - "Captain Kangeroo," and "Romper Room with Miss Flora."

We played outdoors most of the time. In the summer we'd build tents in our breezeway with my dad's old Army blanket, some old blankets and ropes and clothespins. We built some really cool treehouses and even some underground forts where we secretly built little fires. We rode our bikes everywhere, climbed trees, ran through the sprinkler or made our own slip and slide with a big piece of plastic and a garden hose on my neighbor's hill. The boys played Army or we played pioneer. In the early evening we'd get together and play tag, hide-and-go-seek, red rover, statues, red-light green-light, and pom-pom polaway. In the winter we'd sled, build snow forts and had snowball fights, built snowmen and snow horses and ice skated. The only electric "toys" we had were portable phonographs and 45s that sold for 69 cents each.

My other indoor activities were reading (I was an avid reader), art and drawing, baking and knitting and other crafts. Outdoors I loved to pretend I was an explorer/pioneer - I'd make a peanut butter sammich and a mason jar full of kool-aid and head into the woods next to our house. I'd be gone all day and learned about plants, animals and used my imagination. My mom never once worried about my safety and laughed about what a tomboy I was. I also used to play restaurant and make all sorts of dishes the way I'd seen my mom do it. I used rotted wood for the meat. Leafy plants were salads and water was the dressing. Seeds and berries were vegetables and mud of all consistencies became mashed potatoes, pie crust, pie filling and other delicacies.

Maybe it was my imagination or my freedom to play with others or alone - but to this day, I loathe video games. My sons are both addicts - especially the 24-year-old. Between myspace, facebook, music-making software and video games I don't think either one sees much of the light of day, muchless the great outdoors.

I feel sad for kids born after 1970 - they didn't get to enjoy some of the simpler pleasures.

I wish kids could grow up with the same "advantages" I had - it would be a lot more fun for them!

[Reaper]

OMG!! You spoiled kids had an atari 2600!! I had the Sears Pong console and one year I was REALLY good and dropped 500.00 on the Tandy Color Computer in the grey case with a whopping 4k of RAM and chicklet keyboard..lol

[Gellis Indigo]

OMG!! You spoiled kids had an atari 2600!! I had the Sears Pong console and one year I was REALLY good and dropped 500.00 on the Tandy Color Computer in the grey case with a whopping 4k of RAM and chicklet keyboard..lol


*rotfl* I had to go to a neighbor's house to play video games. Didn't own a video game system myself until I had graduated from college and had a full time teaching position, then I bought one!! The Nintendo 64. Gawds I love Super Mario World!!

[Taffy Saltwater]

If the president was making a speech, you were truly fucked. He was on all 3 channels - ABC, CBS, & NBC - & you could only hope your reception was picking up PBS. The best thing about cable is never having to look at Jerry Lewis again.

[lavender r dragon]

i lived most of my childhood (1990-2003ish) in a house built in like the 40's. no central heating and air. the living room had a window air conditioner and between the living room and dining room we had a huge, metal heat grate in the floor. if you weren't wearing shoes and it was on, you had to jump over it.

you could run the microwave or the toaster oven - but not both. and to run either you had to turn out the over head lights in the living room, dining room, kitchen and i think my parent's bedroom too, or you blew a fuse. needless to say there was no dishwasher.

it had been a 2 bed/one bath house but the person before put in some real stairs and turned part of the attic into a hallway and two rooms (one of which also had an air conditioner in the window) - but the ceilings were still slanted. it Did have a cupboard under the stairs a la harry potter lol. the only thing that lived in ours was a vacuum cleaner though.;-)

[Gemdrite]

i lived most of my childhood (1990-2003ish) in a house built in like the 40's. no central heating and air. the living room had a window air conditioner and between the living room and dining room we had a huge, metal heat grate in the floor. if you weren't wearing shoes and it was on, you had to jump over it.

you could run the microwave or the toaster oven - but not both. and to run either you had to turn out the over head lights in the living room, dining room, kitchen and i think my parent's bedroom too, or you blew a fuse. needless to say there was no dishwasher.

it had been a 2 bed/one bath house but the person before put in some real stairs and turned part of the attic into a hallway and two rooms (one of which also had an air conditioner in the window) - but the ceilings were still slanted. it Did have a cupboard under the stairs a la harry potter lol. the only thing that lived in ours was a vacuum cleaner though.;-)
That sounds an awful lot like the house I grew up in! Built in the early 1900s though. And so many add-ons to the house that the floors were never even.

[BlueValkyrie27]

Originally Posted by Gellis Indigo http://www.wench.org/forums/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.wench.org/forums/showthread.php?p=301554#post301554)
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!



My daughter stared at me in mute horror when I told her that we just had Saturday morning cartoons. *rotfl*

24 year old here, I really miss Saturday morning cartoons! The quality was better imo. I watch cartoon network and adult swim and all that, but I really miss waiting all week. The anticipation and getting up early, standing on a chair in the kitchen to get cereal, that was simply the best.

[Patsy the Loomer]

24 year old here, I really miss Saturday morning cartoons! The quality was better imo. I watch cartoon network and adult swim and all that, but I really miss waiting all week. The anticipation and getting up early, standing on a chair in the kitchen to get cereal, that was simply the best.

Somewhere we have a box of full of VHS tapes from the 86-88 era that are nothing but cartoons. 6 hours of Garfield & Peanuts specials, another 6 hours of Saturday mornings, etc. Mom and Dad were pretty good at editing out the commercials and station IDs, but sometimes we had some sneak in. Watching them 20 years later leads to hilarity.

[Branwen]

My Parents never had a party line, but I did have a friend in HS who was one of the first Families to have a Private phone line put into their home. In fact their phone number was xxx-1234 because it was so new. They still had access to the Party Line & could hear all of the gossip that was going on about thier new Private Line.

Where my Parent still ive, we can and do sometimes get part of the party line to fall through. There are times when Mom ca pick up her phone & call someone and she and the person she's talking to can hear the other converation on another persons phone. Really strange.

We had an Atari, we had 2 Pong Stations (Mom somehow won them for free), we even had CoLeeCoVision (I think the spelling is off). We played that one for YEARS. My Brother eventually got a N64 and taught me how to play Mario Bro. and Tetris. He said there was no need to jump along with Mario when I wanted him to jump. It helped though. Then it progressed to other game systems from there.

When Mom wanted to get us to go outside all she had to do was turn off the TV and give us a few sandwiches and boot us out the door. I rode my bike everywhere, I explored the river that we lived next to. I found Owl Pellets, turtles, frogs, went fishing, sat under the bridge & read while listening to the cars pass overhead. I discovered that crossing a fallen tree over a river wasn't as hard as the TV & Movies make it seem. I found out that a bamboo thicket is very peaceful and it filters out much of the noise that one would normally hear. I also found out the your Mom can and does know how many times you slid down a hill on your butt. I discovered some plants aren't as friendly as they may look.

Stinging Nettle, Creeper Vines, Poison Oak, Bramble Vines, many different grasses.

Mom grew up as the Girly Girl of the Family. She wanted a Daughter who would wear dresses and have long hair and just be the "Princess" that she imagined her Daughter would be. I'm still her Princess, altough I'd be the one trying out in the jousting field. My Broghter & I have helped my Mom NOT be afraid of; Frogs, snakes, toads, spiders, lizzards, mice, rats, most insects, turtles, worms and other strange and weird critters.

I have broken my leg being a tomboy while riding my bike and got right back on once my cast was off. I broke fringers and toes and skinned my knees and hands to the point where I thought I was never going to have any skin or digits left.

We were allowed to play outside during the School year AS LONG AS OUR HOMEWORK WAS DONE. There was no TV, Radio, Video Games and Computers to use or even think about then. Everything was turned off until Homework was done first. Then we were instructed to go outside until dinner was ready, which meant when Dad got home from work. Then we were told to go out and play until the streetlights came on and then it was time to take a shower and get ready for bed. We MIGHT be able to watch a TV show for about an hour or so before heading to bed.

If it was too cold or wet outside then Mom had other things for us to do inside the house.

Our TV consisted of the "Tower O' TV's". The bottom TV was a monster of a television set with 4 dials to set the station and 4 more smaller dials for sound and picture clarity. It didn't work, so Mom covered it with a table cloth and it became the base. The next TV was the color TV. We had ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS. The TV was slighltly smaller than the base, but too small to sit on the floor so it sat on top of the base. That TV had Great vidoe reception, just no sound. Everytime you turned up the sound all you got was static. The 3rd TV was a small B&W Tv that sat on top of the Color TV. As you may have guessed it, it didn't have picture, but gave great sound. Since everything was on top of a monster TV set that didn't move, there was no watching TV while eating dinner and it was turned off then. No need in letting everything get over heated while not watching it. We had to remember to change the channel on both the sound and picture TV or we would end up with some really FUNKY TV shows with the dialogue way off.

Everything changed when Mom & dad bought the new TV that swiveled so we could watch it in the kitchen during dinner or Mom & Dad could watch it from their bedroom at night. It even had a remote. So there was no need to get up to change the channel. Sometimes I think it would be best to go back to our simpler times.

My Cousin really doesn't like to come over to my apartment much. I have no TV access. I listen to the radio, watch DVD's, some VHS tapes and goof off on the 'net. He can't understand how I can have a TV set and not watch TV and not be bored.

[lavender r dragon]

...There are times when Mom ca pick up her phone & call someone and she and the person she's talking to can hear the other converation on another persons phone. Really strange.


we used to get the neighbor's cordless phone on our cordless phone occassionally...

....
When Mom wanted to get us to go outside all she had to do was turn off the TV and give us a few sandwiches and boot us out the door.
.....
We were allowed to play outside during the School year AS LONG AS OUR HOMEWORK WAS DONE. There was no TV, Radio, Video Games and Computers to use or even think about then. Everything was turned off until Homework was done first.
...If it was too cold or wet outside then Mom had other things for us to do inside the house.

thats the thing - tv/video games aren't bad as long as parents turn it off sometimes. my stepsons get to watch one 30min show on pbs before homework (while i go through folders and set up their hw for them - they're kindergartners so i draw dotted lines in their composition book for them) but they don't get to do anything else until after its done. they usually play in their room, sometimes in the living room while i watch tv and fold laundry, but they don't watch it all day (we live in an apartment - no yard :-( ). i let them play maybe 15minutes of video games once a week or so - as a reward for good behavior. no good behavior-no game.
i'm such an evil stepmother;-)

[jessicaabruno]

Thanx for posting this. I'm still in that crowd, but still can relate to you guys at the same time.