Just curious where this comes from. I first encountered it in the column of Herbert Kornfeld, the well known gangsta accountant of The Onion, so I assumed it was a gangsta expression. But now I’ve been hearing the expression elsewhere, in non-gangsta contexts.
So where did it come from?
A friend of mine who grew up in Philly in the '70s/'80s says it was common parlance. I, growing up in Chicago in the '60s/'70s, had heard it only sporadically. Much more common was the construction “back in MY day…”
I never heard this phrase until I started working at a Juvenile Rehab group home - and it was used pretty much exclusively by the gang-bangers. So that’s the core group of users, I believe…