Funny, but quite accurate email to share.

[Dave from MN]

If you are 30, or older, you will 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 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 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 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! 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 butts! Nowhere was safe!

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!

Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and messed 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?

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!

There were no cordless phones. The house had one phone normally located in the hall and if you were lucky, it had a really Loooong cord so you could find some secluded corner beyond your Mom’s hearing.

There weren"t any freakin" cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn"t make a call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD !!! 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.

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!

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!

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 butt and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what"s the world coming to?!?!

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-finks!

And we didn"t have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!

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 1980 or any time before!

 

[CASEAHOLIC]

I to am finding this to be sooo true!!! getting to the point where you get sick of all the gadgety.

 

[Ron in Nebr]

Wasn't any sense in getting up and walking across the room to change the tv channel really, since there was usually only one channel, IF it was coming in!

 

[Kow Farmer]

Dave,
AMEN!!! You couldn't have said any of this better.
Kow Farmer

 

[RN]

To start computer program run: load Hollerith card deck in reader, dial 02C on console, push start. Output on 02E usually. Windows? What was on side wall of computer room so operators could see people coming for jobs request. DOS was advance on TOS which was advance on BPS-- and that was advance on panel wiring looms for accounting machines. I have disclosed my computer dynosaur background- need to find a Dilbert character- BOB -button.

 

[Vito]

Truer words have never been spoken.

Vito

 

[Ron in NS]

Compared to us old geezers over 50, you sound like you had it easy......

 

[sotxbill]

Had to run to school to avoid the dinosaurs and hurry home to avoid the Indians. Some times they got close and cut off all my hair.

 

[Adirondack case guy]

Hay Dave; us twice your age old geasers have still got it rough. We gotta figure out how to use these da-blim-dern new fandangled modern day things. It ain't easy for an old dog to learn new tricks. O well, at least I don't have to walk tooo far to the desk.

 

[DH in Carolina]

Hey Dave those were the good old days. I am 62 and we lived back in the sticks in Appalachia Mountians. My grandfather got a tv in 1956. They were afraid it would blow up so they hooked it up at the barn while threashing oats and let it play for three days before taking it into the house. We would walk down the holler every Sat night and watch Gunsmoke. We did walk to school but it was only about a mile. We did go to school barefoot in the summertime. We all got a new pair of shoes when daddy sold the tobaccne grand father farmed with a team of horses and the other one had a team of mules. My Daddy was a plumbing contractor and charged $1.25 per hour. I didn,t know it than but these were the best days of my life. DH

 

[Billy Shafer]

I remember riding my bike. To the store with a sack of tubes. To test them find out which ones were good. Then riding home real fast so we could put them back in the tv to watch it.

 

[ChrisinMO]

Huh, the good old days! I used to love laying in bed late at night listening to the Pittsburgh Pirates away games on the west coast on my staticy little am radio! It was in the summertime and usually too hot to get to sleep as my mother was too tight with money to turn on the air conditioner unless it was going to be hot for long enough to justify it. I still don't know how long is long enough.

As to all the gadgetry, well, I've found that it is all very convenient, addictive and cumulatively expensive. Still it's nice to be able to call my wife when she goes to town and find out she left the phone in the truck when she went into the store to shop! I guess I'll need a GPS next?!

Christopher

 

[S2710]

Another thing that is scary is you drive down the road past a house and in May their is a sign on the front lawn that says congratulation to the graduate and in the last 18 years you drove by the place everyday and you never seen a child in the yard

 

[Germ]

We must of had it real good. We had 3 channels, if the wind wasn't blowing, and the TV gods were willing. Sometimes you had to hold onto one of the rabbit ears and hold your tongue just right to get channel 5, but we could get it and on a real good day it wasn't fuzzy.

There was more worth watching on those 3 channels that I can find worth watching on the 200+ channels we get now. It sure would be nice to turn back the clock, at least on the tube.

 

[Rollie NE PA]

It sure is true. I have two daughters ages 23 and 29 and both are spoiled. I didn't spoil them but my wife and her mother did. Now that I have a new grandson I just might spoil him.

When I went to school there was no such thing as snow days or 2 hr delays. The bus that we rode was an old Reo. I can remember the driver having chains on the front axle as well as the back one. What a bumpy ride that was. Oh the good old days!

 

[Larry in CO]

Sounds familiar... My first Data Processing, now called IT, class was a 407 board wiring class. 5 day class at the IBM center. Graduated to operating the 1401 followed by the 360-30 using TOS "cause we didn;t have any disk drives. Thought we were in tall cotton when we got some disk and was able to install DOS. Been a systems programmer ever since. Larry

 

[Billy Shafer]

Anyone remember the stand at the shoe store. Where you could stick your feet in and it would xray them. Forgot what it was supposed to do,but it was fun. Had one at the Buster Brown store we went to.

 

[Anonymous-0]

Those xray machines gave a large amount of radiation. An equivalent to ten chest xrays of today. Not much shielding on them either, so everyone in the vicinity got rays too!

 

[JBMac]

My mom used to lock us outside in the summer and leave a pitcher of KoolAide and some bread and deviled ham. We had a great time. Wife and I have decided, no video games for our kids.I'm 33

 

[Gene Stevens]

They would be lost if computers still used punch cards and Fortran...

 

[kruser]

Well, my first year in college we had a class on sliderules (still got the old Post). Punch cards didn't come till the second year.
Course most of us would stand out in the halls and smoke before class.

 

[Anonymous-0]

The good old days all right. If we got in trouble in school the principal would warm our behinds with his paddle, and if we told or parents we got whipped by the principal, we would get again for being in trouble. Our phone would ring four times. If we listened in on the neighbors we had to be quiet. One neighbor said to her other party. I hear someone breathing, I think someone is listening. Everyone had a bicycle, and would think nothing of going 10 miles or further from home, as long as we were home before dark. Stan

 

[Goose]

That brought memories of a computer class I took using Cobol as a vehicle.

You'd take all your punch cards to the computer room at 1:00 am because the lines would be short. Then you'd wait an hour to get your program on, only to have it rejected for a syntax error.

 

[Tony S.]

So what are our kids going to tell their kids?

 

[bison]

No kidding kids these days are lazy,fat and spoiled rotten.
i did the first twenty two yrs of my life without electicity,phone, running water or vehicle,no tv either,just a batt operated radio.

imagine that today.
Is prob be seen as child abuse,grand deprevation.

 

[Crem]

Rollie,
Thanks for mentioning riding in a Reo school bus. I also rode in one for a few years back then.

 

[Old Timer in Ohio]

Hey there;
At 77 I don"t even think I"d fit in here
in anyway. My way of communicating is so
far out of date, its taught as an ancient
language. I rode to school in a 39 Chevy
bus, the seats ran lengthwise!? If the
driver had to stop suddenly, we ALL slid
to the front, "pronto"!
Bob
God Bless

 

[Stuart]

I am 28. If you had to work as hard as I have you would be dead by now easy.

 

[paul]

I worked in TOS, but a different one than you are talking of. I was an Atari fan, and this message probably leaves everyone in the dark.

--->Paul

 

[Owen Aaland]

But it was easier when we did not have to know any phone numbers. Just pick up the receiver and tell the operator who you wanted to talk to. Even if you knew the number you couldn't dial it since the phones had no dials. I do remember our number as being 44F6.

 

[Ron in Nebr]

We could sometimes, by the time I was 7 or so, get 3 channels(one was PBS-educational channel). Our local NBC channel came in from a "sub tower" that was about 10 miles from us, the others came in from their original locations, 100 or more miles away...dad spent alot of money on the latest and greatest antennas back then....and the ABC and CBS channels were still fuzzy most of the time. We just accepted it- if you could kinda see what was on it was still better than nothing.

Not TV, but I get a kick these days out of riding in a vehicle with people who as soon as a radio station goes fuzzy for a second, they change the channel...and up here in our area that's pretty often if you're driving down the highway. When I was young it was just a given that distant stations(which they all were) were gonna fade in and out as you listened to them. And sometimes other stations would fade in and out on the same frequency as well...I remember lying in my bed at night in the 70's listening to KOMA from Oklahoma City(1520AM) and KVOO out of Tulsa(1170)....got 'em clear up here in northern Nebraska, came in much better at night than most anything else....WOW(I think?) out of Chicago came in pretty good sometimes too at about 940AM.

 

[Keith Molden]

Yep, and we still survived, but I gotta admit, I do like the comforts we have now, like this thing I'm typing on now. LOL Keith

 

[ericlb]

i can add this, [ im over 50] remember your first car? we had to buy it ourself, as well as keep gas in it and insure it and mantain it, nowdays i hear kids, "im getting a new mustang or honda", 'getting" meaning they dont have 1 thin dime in the car, and therefore no idea of how hard it is to afford a car, i remember as a kid about 17, i got my first one paid 800 bucks for it, but to get the 800, i had to mow lawns sack groceries and wash cars for 3 years before that, you better believe i took good care of that car! it cost me a lot

 

[just another old geezer]

Those cars were something!!! They passed anything but a filling station, the body rusted off every three years and any collision over ten miles per hour would kill you instantly

 

[ericlb]

lol true but then gas was .42/9 a gallon, the rust gave you a chance to prefect your body repair skills, dont know about the crash i got hit head on in a old pickup back then about 15 or 20, i had to cut the fan belts off but was able to drive the truck home, then replaced the whole front end [ got another from a wrecking yard] and drove it another few years after that

 

[Ken Macfarlane]

Its funny now but you look at my family tree and a whole lot of them died in car crashes in the 50s and 60s. Not even serious accidents. Its amazing what people walk away from now.

 

[Billy Shafer]

Yes but they were fun. A lot of things we did back then they claim now should have killed us.

 

[Animal]

We got KOMA in Idaho too. It was the only rock station on after sunset, you talk about radio fade, does anyone remember radios with reverbs? Now that was the deal!

 

[Mattlt]

Oh boy, does that bring back memories. Had and IBM 4361 mainframe when I went to tech school. The printer was 02E...

I still break out my old IBM 370 Reference Summary (the yellow booklet) when the young Java programmers I work with start talking smart ;-)

Don't forget about getting a S0C7 or a S0C4 either!

 

[Southtowns27]

Man, that hits the nail on the head. I'm almost 30 and I can't believe the generation gap between myself and "kids" 10 years younger than me. For those who have even seen "That 70's Show", my old man IS Red Foreman. I never had it easy. As a kid, I spent the vast majority of my free time at the neighbors horse farm just so I didn't have to be around my old man. I guess it worked out. I bought my first truck, a '55 Willys Jeep that I rebuilt when I was 16 so I had something to drive. I still own it. I still have my Atari 2600 too! I have a cell phone, but no texting or any of that fancy crap. I kinda miss the phone that had a mechanical ringer in it...