Thursday, July 9, 2009

Sometimes, Chain E-Mails Are Funny


I got this one today and had to pass it along. If you're a child of the 80s like me, you'll think this is pretty good:

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...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 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 how easy the youth of today have things--

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, using a pen.

Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take a week to get there!

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 MP3s 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.

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal.

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 had no idea. You had to pick it up and take your chances.

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 because there were no remotes.

There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. 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!

You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or before!

6 comments:

seana graham said...

That's fun, Brian.

It is amazing to reflect on how much things have changed even in the last ten years. Sitting around with any small circle of my friends now, inevitably some topic will come up and I'll wish one of us was up to date enough to have a cell phone with the internet on it so we could have the answer Right Now. And it happens a lot in the Finnegans Wake group, let me tell you. It's amazing and somewhat demoralizing that Joyce had all those references in his head.

Brian O'Rourke said...

Seana,

You're absolutely right. Looking back now, I don't understand how adults managed without both cell phones and ATMs.

The Finnegans Wake group, BTW, sounds like a lot of fun. It seems like you're getting a lot out of it. Has the group finished the book, or are you still slogging your way through it?

seana graham said...

Oh lord,no, we're about 30 odd pages in. It will be years.

The odd thing is that though people view it as impenetrable and some sort of horrible chore, reading it together and aloud and then puzzling it out is actually rather exhilerating. It's odd how many times I've raced over to this pub where we meet directly after work, still carrying the burden of the work day and 'not in the mood', and ended up feeling happier for the effort. And I think we all feel that way.

Of course, a pint of beer doesn't hurt anything.

Leigh M. Lane said...

That was the funnest piece I've read in a long time! It is amazing to think of how much has changed in just the last twenty years.

Brian O'Rourke said...

Hey Lisa,

First, thanks for stopping by. And second, you're right. I wonder where the next twenty years will take us. Blogging will probably be a thing of the distant past by then!

Brian O'Rourke said...

BTW, nice website Lisa. Make sure to drop in occasionally, because every month I open the blog up for anybody and everybody to self-promote.