Old guy's rant

[JZ]

If you are 36, or older, you might 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 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 forty, 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!

1) 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!!

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! Stamps were 10 cents!

3) 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!

4) There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!

5) 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 then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?

6) 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!

7) There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOSH !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

8) 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 parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

9) We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'.. Your screen 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!

10) 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!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!

11) 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!

12) And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!


13) And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!


And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!




See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or any time before!


Regards,

Your parents :biggrin:

[S13_MPH]

Bahhhh hahaha, That is too funny, but you have to admit, its the time you grow up in that makes you who you are. But im sure that kids these days will be able to multi task like crazy, and use electronics to their full potential, but never build them or fix them. hahaha and they will get fat!

Its B/C we have reached a platu of technology, and everything just gets improved and regurgitated.
We live in a day of spell check (which i did not use by the way), ordering in food online, Hell we dont even buy CD's anymore. consumerisum is the worst. And its way too easy to get most of the stuff on your list

The way we live life is too fast paced B/C of all the techno bits we have. But your God Dam right. Kids have it too easy!

My 2 cents

[M13]

haha. I can't wait for the technology and benefits available in 2025.


Aside from the humour, "See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or any time before! "

Could be implied to your generation as:

"See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1950 or any time before! "

or to my generation:

"See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before! "

or

"See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 2000 or any time before! "

and on and on.... PPL like feeling better about themselves

[raijin-xiii]

Yeah well us "spoiled rat-bastards" take it up the ass paying for your OAS, GIS, CPP and health care the next few years.

I don't think anyone really understands why technology is something to rant about lol your parents didn't even have these cassettes or Atari and I don't think that's something they'd whine over. Half of them probably died in either of the two world wars we went through too. Being drafted was probably something to complain about.

[JNS Performance]

Being drafted was probably something to complain about.

So true... We really take are veterans for granted.

[Tony-R32]

I do see the humor in your post and it is fun to talk about these things, but in all honesty im not a fan of these comparisons.

You can't compare generation to generation so easily. I don't want to get into a huge rant so here is just a bit of what im trying to say.

People my age, im 19, in their early 20's and those just exiting high school don't have things all that easy. In a world where everything is made simplified by "technology" expectations are unreal high. Thats the one thing I don't think older people understand, even my mother. When it comes to getting a job, working at a job, living your life anything you do, you are expected to be so perfect.

Gen X was not mass media pressured, or subliminally pressured nearly as much as Gen Y is, you can't look out your door anymore without being told what to eat, drink, wear, or do. When Gen X was growing up in the 70's sure things were different but generally speaking expectations and rules were much less strict, people would smoke up, protest, rebel and be free. If someone my age did any of those things we would be sent to rehab, prison, or beaten down by cops.

If hearing the "youth of today is our future" isn't pressure enough, I don't know what is. It's like my grandfather, he's always bantering about how simple things are today. But you can't compare...Did he do more physical labour on the farm and around the house putting in long tiring days? Yeah he did, but he also dropped out at grade 3 to do so. He was never expected to hold an 80 percent average while shelling out thousends of dollars for school and working 30 hours a week after school just to make it all work. He never had to deal with the constant pressure of the work place which is now virtually a 24 hour job, with the ability to access people at any time of the day instantly.

Just as an example "we had to hand write letters to send someone something" which is a fair comment, but you also weren't getting in contact with people from countries half way around the world on a weekly basis. At the funeral home i work at for instance. in the past when you needed to contact another funeral home you mailed a letter but the furthest that letter went was somewhere else in canada. Now we have the ability to communicate much faster but at a price, because of this ability we now have to work with people in portugal who want to ship a body back to their home country. Fast communication makes things easy, but it makes it hard because it opens the opportunity to do bigger more complex things that weren't an option before.

All Im trying to say is just because things are "easier" doesn't mean they are, with the "simplicity" of technology comes 2,3,4 times the work load there was with out it and like i stated before because of the resources available anything less than perfection is no acceptable. You can't say one era was harder to live in than the other, you have to appreciate each of them for what they are and look at difficulties each one holds.

I wouldn't last a day in the 50's? Sure as heck I would, give me a pair of gloves and a pitch fork and i'll lift hay as long as you want me to, life then wasn't as stretched out and fast paced as it is today, i'll trade todays hetic life style for physical labour in a small scale simplistic world of yesterday any day of the week.

Anthony

[derk]

...what is a napster?

[M13]

grade 4's have personal laptops.


true story. I could go on about how awesome their lives are, but I am open enough to see that I have my life to live.

[raijin-xiii]

grade 4's have personal laptops.


true story. I could go on about how awesome their lives are, but I am open enough to see that I have my life to live.

some schools have ipads for little kids' classes to help them learn to read. it's the new pop-up book.

[Nismoist]

A walk in someone else's shoes is always more difficult than it looks.

[CelicaKidd_205]

Hmm... I'm 20, and I have no cell phone, no laptop, no call display, no cable or satellite TV, and I have a vintage turntable that plays my collection of blues and rock 'n' roll, I'm in to guys like Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Little Richard, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and Howlin' Wolf. I'm more "old fashioned" than a lot of people who are old enough to remember those guys :P

I honestly envy people who grew up back in the 50's and 60's. It might've been more physically difficult to do some things, but in honesty life was more simple back then. If something was broke and you were somewhat mechanically minded, you could get it to work again. Now if my iPod screen breaks that's it, it's screwed, $300 for a new unit. Sure the check engine light will tell me if there is a problem with the car, but I've got to have a big uber expensive scanner to actually see what's wrong with it before I can do anything to it, where as in the old days you could just use plain old mechanical know how to find the source of the problem.

Sure technology is great and can do some pretty darn cool things, but are we honestly making things much easier, or are we just creating more problems?

[Phastwon]

Being 28 I can relate to some of the items in the rant, and some I can't. Good read though.

[falcon]

You know, I'm only 22 and a lot of what you said even applies to my early childhood up to about 13-14. That's when technology really started to take off. And I agree with everything you said.

I remember playing lemmings on my DOS based computer. And rocking my walkman with my tape decks.

[GTR-guy]

I love your rant JZ and I can totally relate to what you wrote!
Except I grew up playing with the Colecovison and the NES!
I'm quite happy to have grown up when I did and honestly, I don't envy the kids growing today!

[gtrtt]

How many of you "20 somethings" still live at home? For the most part( the lawyer had me put this in ) , the big difference I see is that while my buds and I couldn't wait to leave home, most of todays kids don't even think of leaving. Each generation faces it's own challenges and you will have to deal with all sorts of crap but I as a parent have given my kids way more "stuff" that my parents did as well as a huge financial head start because I know they couldn't pull it out like i did after moving out at 18 ( and retiring at 42) . The days of making it just by kicking ass are over and more and more people make planning their inheritance their career choice .
If you are still at home thank your parents ( easy ) & take advantage of it and get yourself ahead financially ( set yourself up rather than look at your entire income as spending money) And for those of you who have been and are kicking it out for yourselves, props to you ! keep at it !


Nick
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