The Over 40 Crowd......

[FlaRon]

Growing up without a cell phone
If you are 36, or older, you'll appreciate this!

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

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 that I'm over the ripe old age of forty, 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!

1) 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!!

2) 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!

3) 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!

4) 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!

5) 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?

6) 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!

7) 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 GOSH!!! 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.

8) 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!

9) 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!

10) 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?!?!

11) 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 @#$%&!

12) And we didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove! Imagine that!



13) 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 lucky, 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 1970 or any time before!

Regards,

The Over 40 Crowd

[Widetrack55]

One bad thing about being a kid nowadays is that even though cartoons are available 24/7 none of them are worth watching.

[NWDave]

You over 40 crowd whippersnappers don't have a thing to complain about. Us over 60's crowd could tell you a few things. You had Tape?????? You had an Atari??????????? Our phones had a dial face, not those new fangled push buttons. I'm just waiting for one of the older than dirt crowd to pop in and tell us what for.

[Triplelock]

In the over SEVENTY crowd, television? We got one of the first available in 1950. Channel surfing wasn't heard of, you had one channel and no matter what was on you watched it, even if it was only the test pattern and on weekends I got to see the television sign off by playing the Star Spangled Banner; of course TV was free and soon television antennas doted the houses everywhere.. Prior to TV, we had boys radio adventure programs and on the weekends matinee cowboy double feature movies with a 12 chapter short adventure flick where the hero was always getting killed at the end of each chapter, so you'd have to go back to see how he survived the following week.. Play Station hell, we had Daisey B B guns and were as excited as the kid in Christmas Story, because it was a big step up from our cap guns. . .Whuppins, yeah dad used his razor strop for other purposes than honing his razor and the school teachers all had wooded paddles and used them with great enthusiasm whenever any rule was bent let alone broken; the bad part was if you got whacked in school, you also got it again at home - if you were dumb enough to fess up. . .Telephone? Dialing? You picked up the party line phone and if you didn't hear your neighbor talking an operator would come on and say, "Number Please?" - long distance calls: You were transferred to the long distance operator, gave her either the party you were calling's number or the city and state along with the name and then the operator would say,"hang up and I will call you back when I have your party." Trains burned coal, airplanes had propellers, cars were easily recognized, street car diners had mostly good but affordable food and ususally a Wurlitzer Juke Box with a coin operated selection box at each table. - Hard Times? No Way, those were golden years.

[FlaRon]

I posted that little ditty because I could relate to it to a degree however being 65 I can relate much more to NWDave and Triplelock's comments.

They were the "good old days" and I was fortunate to expierence them live and in person.

Thanks for the walk back in time Triplelock I lived all of that and believe I came out a better person because of it.

Regards,

Ron

[DocZeus]

You guys are showing your age.

I was a child of the 60's, but things then were much as they were in the 40's and 50's.....I watched the "rise of technology", and embraced it for my job, and I think that TOO many people today DEPEND on that technology TOO MUCH. My Daughter is starting to see that what "Dear Old Dad" told her about technology failing, was TRUE, and she's starting to take the steps to exist without it, if need be. This computer is one of the few pieces of technology that brings me entertainment these days.....I don't watch much TV, listen to the radio more than anything.

Guess I'm the "whippersnapper" so far in this thread.

DocZeus
AKA
David

[Triplelock]

You guys are showing your age.

I was a child of the 60's, but things then were much as they were in the 40's and 50's.....I watched the "rise of technology", and embraced it for my job, and I think that TOO many people today DEPEND on that technology TOO MUCH. My Daughter is starting to see that what "Dear Old Dad" told her about technology failing, was TRUE, and she's starting to take the steps to exist without it, if need be. This computer is one of the few pieces of technology that brings me entertainment these days.....I don't watch much TV, listen to the radio more than anything.

Guess I'm the "whippersnapper" so far in this thread.

DocZeus
AKA
David

Thanks David, you just remided me that the store clerks counted out your change to you, they didn't have a computer print out the change. You bought something for a dollar sevety and handed a five dollar bill, the clerk would say:" and thirty makes two and three and four and five as they handed you your change - Remember that?

[JohnFox]

It's fun to remember how 'bad' we had it, but I wouldn't trade the new stuff for any of the old stuff.

Except the bit about Child Protective services .. I sure wish we could go back to beating our kids.....

They were lamenting on the radio a couple of days ago how people are losing the ability to navigate without GPS, and map reading is becoming a lost art. I had to stop using my GPS because I discovered I was losing my ability to get around Phoenix without it. So now, I use my phone, turn off the display, and just put it in my pocket so I still have to pay attention.

The lovely Brenda was commenting on the lost art of counting change, and I said who needs it? We use debit cards for everything, we rarely pay with cash anymore anyway.

We loose some skills, gain a few more. Now, if something comes on the TV that I am curious about, I just pick up my Samsung Tablet, type it into Google, and I instantly know far more about yucca and cassava than I ever thought possible. Or knowing for sure that some actor was in the last Star Trek movie as well as the one I'm watching.

I don't miss three channels of TV, not having a remote, and having to use a card catalog to find a book. Do you think they complained before the Dewey Decimal system came out that the lost art of just browsing up and down library shelves was lost just so you could find a book faster?? Or when the printing press was developed that no one would appreciate the many hours it took to hand ink books??

Yep .. I remember taping radio shows and records onto cassette (or ... gasp!!!! ... 8-track). It sucked canal water. Much better to rip them to disk and create a custom mix on my mp3 player.

[Oldgungeezer]

I too can relate better to Triplelock and NWDave's time frame.

I was a kid in the 50's on a rural (fairly remote) family ranch. The nearest town was a ghost town (about six miles from or place) with a population of less than 25. The nearest real store was probably a 30-45 minute drive (mostly dirt roads) and the nearest supermarket (if you can call it that) was about 55 miles away (by highway). BTW, the nearest pavement was 3 miles away and out nearest neighbor (neighboring ranch) was about two miles away. My point is, it was a far cry from today's world.

Television........it wasn't until the late 50's or early 60's that we got any signal (reception).

My dad built our first bathroom with running water, toilet and shower when I was almost a teenager and it was a seperate building with two rooms: one was the laundry room and the other, the bathroom...........we called it "The Washhouse".

We were adjacent (contiguous) to an Indian Reservation and in many respects, it dominated or at least affected most everything.

I built my first dune buggy out of a 1949 Ford convertible that I took a torch to......removed the fenders, doors, hood, trunk lid, bumpers, windshield, back seat, etc......raised it up with sprinbg spacers in the front and shackle extensions on the rear, then added implement tires all the way around........it could go almost anywhere our tractors could go.

My first dirt bike was a 1955 Triumph 550 cc (single carb), with removed fenders, fat knobby tires, rake kicked out 2 degrees with ceriani dirt forks and pull back handle bars and a single seat........we called them "Desert Sleds"........and they were stable as all get out, with lots of bottom end torque to pull you up on top of the sand........we'd ride fast and the kicked out front end rake made them super stable. This was long before the term of "Moto Cross" even existed.

We leased BLM land and grazed cattle for 25 to 50 miles..................we had "Round Ups" twice per year........and a "Chuck Wagon" to service the round ups.

Internet, Cell Phones, Video Games, Pizza Delivery, Computers..............................Huh????????

I don't think the phrase "I'm Bored" existed in our vocabulary.

It was a good life.......it was a fun life.........and sometimes it was a hard life..........we learned "What Mattered".

BTW, I left home when I was almost 18 years old to get an education in southern California..............and did I ever get an "education" too...........California college life in the 60's was educational in more ways than one.....................LOL

Yes, I'm over 40 (and then some)........the product of a different time and a different place.

Best Regards Folks,

Geezer

[Dalan]

The term: Older than dirt comes to mind.

Pop? No. Fizzies you dropped into water.

Smith and Wesson tactical? Nope, the Johnny Seven Assault rifle, made of fine plastic. Tinker toys. GI Joe.

Bored with the ONE TV channel? Read or die. I read the Naked Communist one weekend. Nothing on TV.

Incredibly, we were not impoverished. It is the kids today, with all they have that really are. I guess I was bored and often. But there were books. And I expanded my tiny mind, just a bit.

And dad kept our boredom to a minimum out at the farm. How many times, no shower, too tired to eat dinner, I went to bed after having *fun* at the farm. I would trade that...for nothing.