The Spoiled Under 40 Crowd
If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!
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 25 miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways ... yadda, yadda, yadda.
I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to do this to my kids ! But now that I'm over the ripe old age of 30, I can't help but look around and notice how easy the youth of today has it! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia! I hate to say it, but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!
1. When I was a kid we didn't have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!
2. There was no e-mail! We had to actually write somebody a letter ... with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across to the nearest mailbox & drop it in the slot, and it would take like a week to get there!
3. There were no MP3's or Napster! 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 mess it all up!
4. We didn't have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it! Can you say emergency break-thru's ... until the operators caught on!
5. 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 mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances!
6. We didn't have fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600 with games like 'Space Invaders' & 'Asteroids' and the graphics were horrible! Your 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! You could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! ... Just like LIFE!
7. When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old woman with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!
8. Sure we had cable television, but back then there were only like 15 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 either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!
9. We didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a fire ... imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop or a pan with HOT oil and real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever like an idiot.
10. When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked-in, we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7-foot cord that ran to the phone - not the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom - guess what we had to do ... hang up and talk to them later.
That's what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!
Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd
"Hiz" Ladybug at 2 years old
Which made me think of my childhood and I thought I would share....
Oh that is sooooo sad...even the 1980's kids had a Utiopia! I must be over 40! HA! Back when we had to walk to school up hill both ways for at least 5 miles, with mom and a dad from Germany who thought the kids of that day had it too easy. So mom and dad made sure we wouldn't get spoiled.
1. We had to go hunting in the hills for rabbit for dinner.
2. We actually looked forward to the nights when we had liver and onions for dinner, which was alot better than when mom served eel, or octopus, or chicken gizzard goulash, or pickled pigs feet, or pickled herring with red cabbage and boiled potaotes!
3. We had to be done with dinner and bathed and in bed by 7pm so we could be up at 5am.
4. We were not allowed to use the phone.
5. TV? That was for the adults when us kids went to bed.
6. Music at our house was the Lawrence Welk Show and the Tom Jones Show.
7. Radio was only German news
8. Saturday morning was for outside chores..not Super saturday Cartoons! (except for our youngest brother...he got to watch them becaseu he was too young to help!)
9. You may spend time hanging out the at Mall...we would have family picnics at the Cemetary when dad died.
10. Phone calls, we were not even allowed to be on the phone unless there was an adult within ear shot.
11. We had to bring our lunch to school, and mom would pack liverwirst and headcheese sandwhiches on rye bread. ( Someone I know called it Prison Bread...the kind they would serve prisoners as their last meal) Of course when dad died we all got cards for free hot lunches in the cafeteria.
12. Records were only German Polka Music, until our step dad came along and we got 8 tracks of Bobby Vinton that my sister and I would sing over and over....until of course our second dad got tired of that tape and chucked it out the car window. (Roses are red my love, violets are blue, sugar is sweet my love, but not as sweet as you...Lonely, I'm still lonely, I have nobody for my oooooooown ...You are my special Angel...Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, La,la la la la la la la My melody of love)
Oh and Kathy Young...A Thousand Stars in the Sky
So now you know what is wrong with me!
You would think that we would not have had any friends at all. Au Contraire! We had kids over to the house all the time. Mom was home with us. One of the few moms that were still at home. Our friends would look at us kind of funny when we would go outside for no appaent reason, but we explained that mom just told us to. They just didn't understand her when she spoke in German. Though I don't croon to Bobby Vinton anymore, I still sing love songs...I just sing them to my Jesus now.
8 comments:
Thanks for the sweet comments...wow.do we have some thing in common..GERMAN heritage!
I did learn a bit of French...no German..but a tad to get me by with the Swiss Germans.
I believe you go to your Google Reader to follow blogs...check your option board.
Thanks for wanting to follow my story! I hope it blesses you in a special way.
NOW to comment... LOL
I WALKED at least a mile! in gradeschool.
Popcorn cooked in a pan with oil was a treat!
My first hand held transistor radio was a huge biggy! and the 8 track tape player surpassed the record player!
An electric typewriter was a WOWIE!
Playing outside was FUN and an adventure!
Did I age myself tooo much!
When I was little, the TV was not allowed on until after 8:00, but all adults went to bed at 9:00. Us kiddos went to bed at 8:00! We thought it was 'risky' sitting on the stairway stoop trying to listen (we couldn't actually 'see' the screen). It usually was risky, because we always got caught. We ALWAYS got caught.
When I was a young adult, my parents let me 'borrow' their old clunker to get back and for to college everyday. The only bad thing...it WAS truly a clunker. No cell phones to call home and say, "Help me!" At a young age, I knew how to change a tire, change the oil in the car, etc. Just had to!
I remember when McDonald's opened up in the nearby city. My parents took us to eat there. I was probably the only girl in school who had eaten at McDonalds. It was the talk of the town.
Haircuts for the boys were always the 'buzz' cut look, so mom or dad could cut (buzz) the boys hair at home. There were no choices about what kind of hair cut or strip of color someone wanted in their hair. Plain and simple home haircuts were the norm.
LOL! Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
I'm 50.
*I walked to school. 3 miles each way. really. it just seemed uphill both ways
*liver and onions for dinner
*chicken gizzard goulash
*lamb - too much lamb, I don't eat it anymore
*one phone call per evening, never over 10 minutes - mom would hang up even if we were in mid sentence
*party lines
*Lawrence Welk, Mitch Miller (Sing Along with Mitch), Ed Sullivan, American Bandstand
*Piggly Wiggly or Jewel Market
*up at 6am Saturdays to get chores done by 9am
*woken by light opera on the hi-fi
*Bobby Vinton (still love him!)
*sack lunches, yes.
*oh. here's one for the memory books: "feminine protection" the size of mattresses and those terrible awful horrible belts to hold them in place
:o)
Thought of a few more things:
*manual typewriter
*no calculators (unless you were a scientist or had scads of $)
*power steering? not in our cars!
*air conditioning? nope.
*swarms of children playing outside til dark..safely
Oh, I'm 1/4 Swiss, 1/4 English and 1/2 Serbian (Serb accounts for too much lamb)
Blessings,
Jane
I have so enjoyed reading all your comments and your stroll down memory lane. I'm almost 50 and I remeber most of the things on lady janes list as well.
I love the Bible verse for the day at the top of your blog! 1 Peter 1:7 is what is there as I write this. maybe it changes day to day? Anyway, this is one of my favorites.
Well, I planned on changing it everday, but it's been over a week since I've blogged! And yes, God's word is good!
The stroll down Memory Lane jarred loose some memories of my own:
One or two brands of toothpaste were available. No whitening strips /trays for bright-white teeth. (And, a trip to the dentist was a rare occurrence!)
Girls HAD to wear dresses to school – even in 10 degree below weather with snow as high as the telephone poles.
Black and white TV. (When color TV came into being, we couldn’t believe it!)
Penny candy available in bins. When the FDA mandated individually wrapped candies, it killed the penny candy business.
Postage stamps cost 3 cents.
Using a manual typewriter and having the typewriter ribbon gum up and dry out.
Mimeograph machine… to make copies of documents. Anyone remember the smell of the mimeograph ink and waiting for it to dry or purple smears would stain your hands?
Rubber bands for ponytails. No cloth-covered scrunchies or head bands. Those rubber bands would pinch and break hair strands by the handful!
Mascara came in a little plastic case and was a hard, black cake with a small brush. I was just a little girl but would see many teenagers spit on the cake and scrub the tiny application brush over and over the black rectangle to load it up with the thick mixture. Then, they’d gob it on their eyelashes.
I remember seeing my mother use deodorant that was a cream and came in a little white jar. It had to be rubbed on to her armpits. No fancy, herbal, clear-drying spray deodorant back then!
Ironing! No permanent press fabrics! Ironing was a huge chore! And most families had a clothesline in their backyards.
Car windows had to be manually rolled up and down. Locks on car doors were buttons that had to be pushed down or pulled up.
Milk came in glass bottles with a waxed cardboard plug on top.
Waxed paper was used to keep sandwiches fresh. No self-clinging plastic wrap or sandwich baggies back then!
Women had to roll their hair on curlers every night and sleep on the darn things. No blow dryers, curling irons, hot rollers, or flat irons. You were lucky to have a helmet-style hair dryer. Before that, lots of women used a soft plastic bonnet/hose attachment place on their vacuum cleaners to dry their curlered hair. You’d press a switch and the vacuum would blow in reverse. The hose and bonnet would fill with air like a balloon and the roar of the vacuum would overtake the household until one’s hair was dry. Cutting edge stuff back then, but now... hilarious!
Birthday parties were a luxury and consisted of Pin-the Tail-on-the-Donkey, Hide’n Seek, and birthday cake and ice cream. No huge productions and NO gift bags for each guest.
Well, thanks for the memories!
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