Back in the day...I didn't have a pretend fan base.

My friend just emailed me this "When I was a kid..." thing for the over-30 crowd (I haven't aged out into the over-40 group yet, phew!).  These always crack me up - and also make me wonder if life isn't more complicated with all this technology stuff.

Here's the synopsis...with more of my stellar thoughts below.

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... Barefoot... BOTH ways…yadda, yadda, yadda (For the record, my dad DID wear stone shoes and carried potatos in his pockets to keep his hands warm - and then he had to eat them for lunch.  Or so he claims.)

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 my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it! But now, 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 a damn 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 damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!  (Which I never understood - I mean, that's why the librarian was there, right?)

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 mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there!  Stamps were 10 cents! (I dream of 10 cent stamps....)


Child Protective Services didn't care if our parents beat us.  As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our ass!  Nowhere was safe!  (And household items were fair game....wooden spoons, paddles, frying pans...)


There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store 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 @#*% it all up!


There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our car.  We'd play our favorite tape and "eject" it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless.  Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?


We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that's it!  (UGH...and when you called someone, only to get a busy signal - you had to sit there forEVER trying again and again...and you couldn't leave the side of the phone because it was CORDED to the wall...and God forbid you wanted privacy - all your allowance money went to a 90 foot phone cord that you could loop through the house to the upstairs hallway)

There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOD !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!


And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

And we didn't have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was!  It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!!
You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!


We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600!  With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen 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 had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing!  You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!! NO REMOTES!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!  (Admit it....you've continued watching something awful when you realized your remote was dead...)

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, you spoiled little rat-finks!

And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!
And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort.
And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!
And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on.  If you were luckily, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.
You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980 or any time before!


So now of course I'm sitting here remembering more hard times...the days before 'instant' anything - oatmeal, jello, pudding....where you had to plan ahead for a meal....

Or when you had to enter the actual bank to withdraw money - in all honesty, I'm not even sure people still work INSIDE the banks...other than the tiny leprechauns that work the ATMs.

Or when your dog could take a dump anywhere and you weren't run down by the bag-your-poo-police.

I remember when we got our first VCR...and the 'remote' was attached to the box by a wire that we had to avoid tripping over during showtimes. Or our first computer - a Tandy - that was little more than a typewriter.

Now I have so many electronics in my house, purse and workbag that I'm probably glowing.  I remember when work wasn't something you COULD take home with you even if you wanted to.  There were actual weekends and holidays where you were off the grid and nobody thought anything of it - they were off the grid, too.

Now, as I prepare to take a three week hiatus...I'm having to remind my team daily that I will be out of contact - for it is such a foreign concept.  

Remember, my trusty sales team, when there wasn't twelve ways to reach your assistant?  Well...hard times are a-comin...