You Wouldn’t Last 10 Minutes
Here’s one for the “over 30″ crowd to laugh about conspiratorially, and for the “under 30″ crowd to shrug thier shoulders and think, Who cares? It was obviously written by someone who’s a bit jaded and possibly has teenagers of their own.
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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 BOTH ways ….through year ’round blizzards. Carrying their younger siblings on their backs … to their one-room schoolhouse, where they maintained a Straight-A average, despite their full-time, after-school job at the local textile mill … where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death! 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 catalog!!
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 messed 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 Boxes 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 Play station video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics sucked ! 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!
When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn’t see, you were just screwed!
Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! 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 bastards!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up … we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire .. imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot. 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!
September 24th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
Out friggin standing. Who is this guy?
September 24th, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Dugh,
Did you write that or just transcribe it? Whoever wrote it, it’s fucking outta sight, turkey!
Takes me right back to the late 70s/very early 80s.
September 24th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
It’s a guy named Ernie Cline, who Mookee found online. There is actually more to the bit than is in this transcription…
September 25th, 2006 at 12:07 am
This reminds me…
My family had a rotary dial telephone until I was in high school. I almost had a stroke the day I came home and discovered a telephone with *gasp* buttons(!) in the kitchen. Of course, mom and dad had not bothered to order - in fact, they did not even know of - “touch tone” service, so it didn’t work for outgoing calls. At all. For at least a week. I’d furiously punch at the buttons, but the dial tone would just taunt me endlessly until that awful robotic shrew came on the line, saying, “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up…” To dial out, I ended up having to walk four blocks to a pay phone at the A&P, which was, predictably, rotary dial.
Ah, the good old days.
September 25th, 2006 at 8:02 am
Not too long ago I was driving some girls in their early 20’s* around to meet a couple of our friends for dinner. We didn’t know where the restaurant was, so I handed my cell-phone to one of the girls and told her that our friend’s number was in the address book and to call him for directions. Afterwards the girl in the back seat said, “Wow. What did people do before cell-phones?”
I pulled the car over, stopped, turned off the engine and turned around to look her in the eye and said, “We made better plans.”
True story.
*Don’t ask why I drive girls in their early 20’s around, I just do. Leave it at that.
September 25th, 2006 at 12:55 pm
I actually *miss* rotary phones. There’s something very satisfying about spinning the dial. My parents still have one in their house.
Zapski, we don’t wonder why you drive girls in their 20s around. What we worry about is that it sounds like you’re a Dad giving your daughters a ride to a slumber party…
September 25th, 2006 at 7:11 pm
I kind of miss the rotary too, twenty years down the road. I’ve got my eyes peeled, btw…as there seem to be more rotary phones in thrift stores out here than out West…you wanted black though, right?
September 25th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Yup, black. Something classic like out of a film noir. Those things are starting to show up in thrift shops all over the place…
September 26th, 2006 at 6:30 am
I actually felt old at that moment. I know I’m not old, yet, but I’m old enough to resent people for being young. I mean it’s like they think they have Life by the balls, and it’s true.
What they don’t realize it that it’s just a reach-around and they’re slipping the Cock of Life firmly into place.
September 26th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
As this linkblog’s resident youth I feel a need to post my reply to this, especially considering how ignorant and offensive it is.
I will not contest that youth today have things that your generations did not. We can change the channel without leaving the chair. We can send an e-mail rather than getting our fingers dirty writing with a quill and ink. These things are all true. To make the leap from that to the idea that our generation is free of problems or even has fewer or simpler problems than your generation is, quite simply, absolutely ridiculous.
The things that make the lives of people in our generation easier are things that were made in direct response to the things that made the lives of people in your generation harder or more complex. Caller ID was invented because your generation didn’t know who was calling until they picked up the phone. Of course our lives seem simpler to you, because we’ve solved the problems that you often lamented. But the thing to remember, that this post completely forgets, is that with each solution comes problems. It’s very easy for someone we’re trying to contact to ignore us. I will use an example using cell phones and caller ID (which 90 percent of cell phones have) because it’s quite simple. Unlike members of your generation, we are constantly available to our parents. You could go out on a Friday night, do whatever the hell it is you wanted to do, and be absolutely sure that you wouldn’t have to talk to your parents about it until you got home. People in my generation can be accessed, retrieved, and held accountable by their parents at any given moment. Personal freedom and privacy are gone. Caller ID doesn’t help in this particular case, because if you ignore your parents, they know that there’s a reason that you’re ignoring them. Opening constant and easy lines of communication means that avoiding unwanted communication is nearly impossible and always, always comes with consequences. Perhaps this is a good thing for parenting, but to say it makes the lives of people in our generation easier is, to be honest, f*@!ng stupid.
Zapski, as to your witty retort, yes, people probably did make better plans in your generation because they had to. Now, there is no concrete reason for people to try to make better plans; they can always just call on the cell phone and say they’ll be late. Accountability has gone out the window because of cell phones, so don’t blast our generation for not planning when you’ve given us a reason not to plan. This has created a problem as much as (if not more than ) it has solved one.
We wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes in 1980? Well put on yourselves the expectations that teenagers have today — complete technological understanding, a lack of privacy, no assurance of accountability or punctuality, relying on e-mail to do actual business when it is so flooded with spam and useless forwards — try living under all that as a 19 year old without any experience in how it was before, and you wouldn’t last five seconds in 2006.
September 26th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
I won’t even call you Kyle, DB (even though I relish doing so, because it’s one of my absolute favorite names and I don’t know any actual Kyles), because I can tell you’re in bit of a mood.
I think the original post and the comments following (even Zapski’s) were meant to be at least somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
For what it’s worth, I agree with quite a bit of what you said, sort of: I hate caller ID and block all outgoing calls except to close personal friends. As well, I often wish it were still 1974 and life moved a whole lot slower. Technology is absolutely as much a curse as it is a blessing. And I guarantee I miss my privacy as much as you do. In fact, I’ll bet you a shot of scotch I miss it *more* than you do. Of course, if you win that bet, you’ll have to wait a few years (until you’re 21) for me to pay up.
BTW: Try saying you’re “unreachable” on your outgoing voicemail message. People will get it, trust me. Marketers, teachers, girlfriends, etc. may try to convince you that you are (or need to be) accessible 24/7. Guess what? You’re *not* and you needn’t be. The choice is yours alone.
As for the parents, I guess…just keep losing the phones they give you? they’ll get tired of buying new ones. They may ground you or something, but they will eventually tire of that as well. Then go out and buy a prepaid phone if you feel you really need one. Parents have to respect boundaries just as everyone else does. If ya have be crafty to impress that upon them, so be it. And hey, you’re in college now anyway. Just tell them you’re busy or, if necessary, to mind their own business.
September 26th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
First of all, we’re not different generations. None of us are realistically old enough to be your parent.
Second of all no one in your “generation” solved these things. Caller ID has been around since 1984, so even people in their 30s now were still mostly in high school at best.
That being said, technology is what it is. You’d last no longer in 1980 than any of us will last in 2080. Imagine what the world must be like for our grandparents or (if they’re still around) great grandparents today! And yes, I think it’s amusing because in another 10 years some smarmy kid in college today will probably be saying many of the same things, tailored to the kids in college in 2016… :)
September 27th, 2006 at 6:19 am
I turn my phone off when I don’t want to be reached.
We old-timers use a thing called “common sense” to solve problems. ;-)
October 1st, 2006 at 8:39 pm
I just make sure the people I don’t like don’t have my phone number.