1984

[misskellibad1]

When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious

lectures 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've reached the ripe old age of 33, I can't help but

look around and notice the youth of today.

You've got it so frickin easy!

I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a goldamned 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 - we wanted to

know something, we had to go to the goldamned library and look it up

ourselves!

And 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 frickin mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

And there were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you

had to go to the goldamned record store and shoplift it yourself! Or we had

to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ'd usually

talk over the beginning and screw it all up!

You want to hear about hardship?

You couldn't just download pron! You had to bribe some homeless dude

to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the 7-11! It was either that or

jackoff to the lingerie section of the JC Penney catalog!

Those were your options!

We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone

and somebody else called they got a busy signal! 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 boss, your mom, a collections agent, your drug

dealer,you didn't know! You just had to pick it up and take your chances,

mister!

And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames 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 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 faster until you

died!

Just like LIFE!

When you went to the movie theater there was no such thing as stadium

seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front

of you, you were screwed!

And sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like

20 channels and there was no onscreen menu! You had to use a little book

called a TV Guide to find out what was on!

And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on

Saturday morning... D'ya hear what the hell I'm saying? We had to

wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little bastards!

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too

easy! You're spoiled, I swear to God! You guys wouldn't last five

minutes back in 1984!

.