RedneckDude RedneckDude

When we were young...

When we were young...

Yeah, yeah...

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 my 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! Stamps were 10 cents!


Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass! Nowhere was safe!


There were no MP3' s or Napsters! If 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 would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car. We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished and the tape would come undone. Cause - that's how we rolled, dig?


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! NO REMOTES!!!


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 or before!


Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd

4,415 views 38 replies
Reply #26 Top

I remember my Mom and Dad would get groceries to feed 8 kids and themselves at the Safeway for around $25.00 a week!!

My Dad told me his Mom sent him to the country store for a loaf of bread, a pound of bologna, a pound of cheese, pint of mayo, and a six pack of pepsi. She wanted her change back, and she only sent a dollar!! In the 30's I think.

Reply #27 Top

Quoting tazgecko, reply 1
what ever you do redneckdude, don't start wearing brown and a brimmed hat. Those were the days.

 
End of tazgecko's quote

You got that right!!

Reply #28 Top

or turned into a sex slave and that was so good.
End of quote

???? o_O :P *_* :sheep: :-"

Reply #29 Top

Video games,what were those.:maybe:   I grew up with Lincoln Logs,(fun to feed to the dog) Silly Putty(most went in my hair),an erector set or two,plastic army men (most of which ended up in the vacuum cleaner)and several hopelessly kinked Slinkys. I also had an arsenal of cap pistols,rifles and even a cork rifle or two.  We thought we were high tech when the etch-a-scetch came out! I built a lot of 1/24 scale models until they ruined the glue for them to stop glue sniffers. What crap.it wouldn't hold anything,my brothers knocked them to pieces.

Not a one required batteries or  an internet connection to use them. In fact,very few   came with instructions,not that I read them back then. I had better things to do like putting silly putty in my sisters hair, chasing her with a slinky or poppin'caps at my brothers. (not the same today,you have to buy real bullets)x_x

Reply #30 Top

I remember really enjoying the hot wheel cars and tracks when they first came out until my Mom found out the tracks worked great for a belt in a pinch.  :(

Reply #31 Top

I remember really enjoying the hot wheel cars and tracks
End of quote

Doesn't surprise me coming from you, CarGuy! :grin:

Reply #32 Top

Those were the days, building tree houses, riding our bikes to the river to go swimming, gone from sunup to sunset! You can't get children today to even go outside!   Carguy, my mom used my hot wheels tracks the same way! Ouch! ;)

Reply #33 Top

lllol... me too !!! I'm 53..reading this made me remember more and more stuff...like my first "roller" skates.. adjustable to all shoes (metal plates on metal wheels,lol) and, school started at 7:30am up to 4:30pm and just try to speak or move during class !!!! Thanks for the post, made my day!!!

Reply #34 Top

Remembering back to my childhood, Barbie seemed a lot older than.  I would have pegged my Barbie for something like 33.  Barbie today looks more like 14.

Reply #35 Top

Never had Hot Wheels, but I did have a Trik-Trak

Those were the days. Better than any computer ;p

Reply #36 Top

I think what I miss the most from my childhood in the 50's and 60's is the sense of optimism.

Things were good and we knew they would only get better. We would see to that. Look how that worked out!

Reply #37 Top

I miss my Star Wars action figures! Gonna go buy some for my daughter.......so I can play with em!

Reply #38 Top

From the time I started in first grade, (no kindergarden then) I walked several miles to and from school olong a main road.  Life was good, the only *bad times* seem to happen around my birthday.  Every year mom would plan a small birthday party, and every year I would get the measles and the party would have to be cancelled, but there would always be next year! 

 My brother and I built a one and a half story *thing* from the leftover lumber my Dad used to build the garage. It was rickety and wobbly but we had a lot of fun using hammers and nails.  Unfortunately I nelt on a rusty nail and had to get a tetanus shot. We played in old dirty chicken coops. We played with rusty things, a bunch of us kids played ball in the back yard ( I was the catcher, but standing way too close to the batter my head got banged when the kid swung the bat)...but that did not stop any of us from playing again.

 

 

I think what I miss the most from my childhood in the 50's and 60's is the sense of optimism.
End of quote
  Yes there was that, something that isn't around too much any more.