When I was a kid ...

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, moan, moan, moan. And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to talk nonsense like that about how hard I had it and how easy kids today have 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 bloody 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 catalogue!!

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 road and put it in the letter box and it would take like a week to get there!

There were no MP3's or Napster! If you wanted to steal music, you had to get a bus to the record shop 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 bleep it all up!

We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got an engaged tone, 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 mum, 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 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 were stuffed when it came to TV channel hopping! You had to get off your butt 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 on Live & Kicking (when the phone numbers started with 081 and not 0208 like they do now!) you spoilt little buggers!

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!

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

Regards,

The over 30 Crowd

(The opinions expressed here are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the University of Greenwich - Ed.)