# Damn kids... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 30, 1999, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689 "1999-09-30T23:50:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Sealemon88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c68b51/32.png) [@Sealemon88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sealemon88)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 1999, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/1 "1999-09-30T23:50:00Z")
You lousy younguns have **no** idea how easy you have it! I tell ya, things were **hard** when I was your age… We didn’t have these Dreamcasts and Playstations. We had ColecoVisions, and Intellevisions, and **Atari 2800s** and we were happy! We didn’t have these Pentium II, 128 meg, monster PCs…we had Commodore 64s (64 **kilobytes** mind), and Radio shack **TSR80** s, and we were grateful… And we didn’t have CDs; we had to make do with these big-ass records that would sound like frying bacon after about 5 plays. And we had **libraries** with **books** , instead of this freakin’ internet. If you wanted to write to somebody, you had to use paper, instead of this instant email crap. You lousy kids never had to wait a week to get a letter…you damn kids… \< sigh. \> Somehow, my future old man rants just won’t stack up to my grandfather’s accounts of World War II, or my parent’s accounts of Vietnam and the death of JFK… * * * You say “cheesy” like that’s a **BAD** thing. ---
**Author:** ![neuro-trash\_grrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3ab097/32.png) [@neuro-trash\_grrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/neuro-trash_grrrl)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/2 "1999-10-01T00:40:00Z")
Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ll never be able to match my mother’s “In my day, we had to walk five miles to school! Uphill both ways!” ---
**Author:** ![lovelee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/439d5e/32.png) [@lovelee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lovelee)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/3 "1999-10-01T00:56:00Z")
Wow, that’s what _my_ dad says! I’ll bet they went to the same school. ---
**Author:** ![Persephone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecc23a/32.png) [@Persephone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Persephone)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/4 "1999-10-01T00:58:00Z")
“Uphill both ways, barefoot, in snow up to my hairline,” says my 96-year-old great-grandmother. “And I was grateful just to go!” ---
**Author:** ![TVeblen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4bbf92/32.png) [@TVeblen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVeblen)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/5 "1999-10-01T00:59:00Z")
Neuro-Trash: oooh, a classic! Only when my folks used it, is was five miles each way, IN THE SNOW. Then there was the nuclear blast: you kids are so spoiled. When we were kids, we’d get candy for Christmas, and an orange, and we thought we’d been given the world. Sad to say, my folks were much older than most parents of kids my age, and they were teens during the Depression. It was probably exact truth. Feeling degenerate, Veb ---
**Author:** ![lvick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d07c76/32.png) [@lvick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lvick)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/6 "1999-10-01T01:04:00Z")
Luxury ---
**Author:** ![WallyM7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b5e925/32.png) [@WallyM7](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WallyM7)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/7 "1999-10-01T01:06:00Z")
Yeah, and we didn’t have MTV, either. We had to take drugs and hallucinate our own videos. * * * According to the Pope, a woman can be a saint, but not a priest. ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/8 "1999-10-01T05:57:00Z")
Oh, man…my dad grew up in a farmhouse that didn’t have indoor pluming until he was like 10 or something so he would tell us all how he and his brother used to open the window and pee on the roof in the winter so they wouldn’t have to trek through the snow to the outhouse. AND one year they got nothing but oranges for Xmas…AND their old farmhouse windows were so poorly fitted that they’d wake up in the morning with snow on the foot of their beds! TOP THAT! ---
**Author:** ![Mac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cc9497/32.png) [@Mac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mac)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/9 "1999-10-01T06:12:00Z")
> [@](#): > > AND their old farmhouse windows were so poorly fitted that they’d wake up in the morning with snow on the foot of their beds! TOP THAT! Ha they were lucky to have a farmhouse my grandparents had to sleep outside in the middle of the street with trafic! ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 9:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/10 "1999-10-01T09:34:00Z")
There’s a Monty Python sketch that picks it up where you guys are now and goes way, way beyond that… “The 24 of us had to live in a shoebox in the middle of the street. We had to get up at 4 in the morning to start working our 25 hour workday, for which we didn’t even RECEIVE a salary but HAD TO PAY, and then we got home and our drunk father would beat us up and frie us in boiling lard, just before kicking us to bed 2 hours after we got up starting to work the very next working day !! But kids these days just don’t seem to appreciate the good things in life anymore !!” Then the next guy takes over, exaggerating even more, etc. etc. No exact quotes, just my memory talking. Coldfire * * * “You know how complex women are” - Neil Peart, Rush (1993) ---
**Author:** ![Poto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ab992/32.png) [@Poto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poto)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/11 "1999-10-01T11:11:00Z")
This is for real. I walked 0.7 miles to school, which went from 6 AM to noon.Then the other shift of kids came in.In the spring we had the other shift, noon to 6PM. They had to hire more teachers, but the school was too small.Baby boom years. Four years later they had some barracks brought in, so all kids could have the regular hours. ---
**Author:** ![TheDoll](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c2a13f/32.png) [@TheDoll](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheDoll)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/12 "1999-10-01T14:02:00Z")
Any generation who thinks they had it tough remember… The 13th Generation (born 1961-1981) survived a “hurried” childhood of divorce, child abuse, latchkeys and devil-child movies. They came of age curtailing the earlier rise in youth crime and fall in test scores—yet heard themselves denounced as so wild and stupid as to put The Nation At Risk. I’d rather walk to school uphill both ways for five miles than to be abused. ## PS, I do acknowledge that all generations have had their personal hell. Let’s put this whole argument to rest by being happy that our children will have more advantages than we did. “Imagination is more important that knowledge.” Albert Einstein ---
**Author:** ![lvick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d07c76/32.png) [@lvick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lvick)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/13 "1999-10-01T14:10:00Z")
You were lucky ---
**Author:** ![Satan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Satan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Satan)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/14 "1999-10-01T14:57:00Z")
We had to \>i\>walk across the room\* to change the channel… ---
**Author:** ![AuraSeer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c2a13f/32.png) [@AuraSeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AuraSeer)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/15 "1999-10-01T15:01:00Z")
“I was born in a paper sack In the bottom of a sewer. I had to eat dirt clods for breakfast, My family was so poor! My daddy was a waitress; My momma sold bathroom tile; My brothers and sisters all hated me 'Cuz I was an only child.” –from _Generic Blues_ by Weird Al * * * Laugh hard; it’s a long way to the bank. ---
**Author:** ![Gazelle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Gazelle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gazelle)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/16 "1999-10-01T15:07:00Z")
A comedian - Richard Jeni? - does the funniest take on this I’ve ever heard. It goes a something like this: Arms? We didn’t have arms when I was growing up. We had to use our tongues to open doors, hail cabs, etc. Food? We didn’t have food back in my day. We had to eat lint. Sucked it right off the carpet, out of our pockets, and in times of real need, we’d go for bellybuttons. That’s right, I come from a family of armless lint-suckers. AND WE WERE HAPPY! * * * Most common question I ask: “What?” Most common question I get: “Are you really hearing impaired?” ---
**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/17 "1999-10-01T16:42:00Z")
But you try to tell kids today that, and they won’t believe you. ---
**Author:** ![davidbrantley](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@davidbrantley](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidbrantley)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/18 "1999-10-01T16:57:00Z")
We didn’t have carpools. I had to WALK ACROSS THE STREET to the soccer field! ---
**Author:** ![Sealemon88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c68b51/32.png) [@Sealemon88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sealemon88)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/19 "1999-10-01T18:27:00Z")
You spoiled brats, with your Windows, and your Apples. We had to use Basic, and COBOL, and FORTRAN… And we were **grateful**!!! * * * You say “cheesy” like that’s a **BAD** thing. ---
**Author:** ![whc.03grady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a6a055/32.png) [@whc.03grady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/whc.03grady)\ **Post date:** [October 1, 1999, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689/20 "1999-10-01T18:42:00Z")
In my generation, we called it the Atari 2600 (the hot rods were the 5200s), not the 2800 (see OP). [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/damn-kids/8689.md?page=2)