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 ten miles to school every morning. Uphill and barefoot… BOTH ways. Yawn! How could it be uphill both ways?
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 50, 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 land of milk and honey! And I hate to say it, but you young ‘uns today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the interweb. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the bleedin’ local library and look it up ourselves, in the index card box!
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 post box and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 5 pence apeice!
Social Services didn’t give a rats hoo-haa if our parents gave us an ‘ear warmer’. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick the shit out of us! Nowhere was safe!
There were none of them there iPods, iPhones, iTunes gubbins If you wanted to steal music, you had to schlep down to the record shop and shoplift it yourself!
Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and that Tony Blackburn would usually talk over the beginning and ruin it with one of his bobbins jokes! There were no CD players or iPods! We had tape decks in our car. We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished and the tape would unravel. Because – that’s how we rolled. Geddit?
We didn’t have fancy technology like call waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got an engaged tone and that was that!
And we didn’t have the luxury of Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mum, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a bailiff, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, dude! That’s if you had a phone! WE had to use semaphore!
We didn’t have any state-of-the-art Sony Playstation or X-Box 360 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 magazine called a TV Times to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! What with TWO flamin’ channels! You had to get off your arse and walk over to the TV to change the channel! It was BBC or ITV. AND NO REMOTE CONTROL!!
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 SPOILT LITTLE RAT BASTARDS!!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat summat up we had to use the stove! Imagine that! NO DINGBOX!
That’s exactly what I’m talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You little arseholes wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or before!
End of rant!
