I’m sure all or most of you have recv’d this E-Mail. For those of you who haven’t, here it is:
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 through year 'round blizards, 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 twenty-nine, I can’t
help but look aroud and notice the youth of today. You’ve got it
so fuckin’ easy!
I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a goddamned
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 goddamned library and look it up ourselves!
And, there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a
letter–with a pen!–and then you had to walk all the way across
the street and put it in the fuckin’ 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 goddamned 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 begining and fuck it all up!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn’t just download
porn! 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
lingere section of the JC Penney catalog! Those were your
options!
We didn’t have fancy shit 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 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 ass! 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 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 fuck 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!
This is SO true! I remember when MTV (Music Television) actually played music on it… all day!
I also had the original Pong game. My brother and I were so good at it my father would bet his friends that they couldn’t beat us. He must’ve made a fortune off of us.
How 'bout you guys?
