In My Day...
From a Washington Post Report from Week 228, in which readers
were asked to tell Gen-Xers how much harder they had it in the old days:
Second Runner-Up: In my day, we couldn’t afford shoes, so we went barefoot.
In the winter we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction. (Bill
Flavin, Alexandria)
First Runner-Up: In my day we didn’t have MTV or in-line skates, or any
of that stuff. No, it was 45s and regular old metal-wheeled roller skates,
and the 45s always skipped, so to get them to play right you’d weigh
the needle down with something like quarters, which we never had because our
allowances were too small, so we’d use our skate keys instead and end
up forgetting they were taped to the record player arm so that we couldn’t
adjust our skates, which didn’t really matter because those crummy metal
wheels would kill you if you hit a pebble anyway, and in those days roads
had real pebbles on them, not like today. (Russell Beland, Springfield)
And the winner of the velour bicentennial poster: In my day, we didn’t
have no rocks. We had to go down to the creek and wash our clothes by beating
them with our heads. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia)
Honorable Mentions:
Back in the 1970s we didn’t have the space shuttle to get all excited
about. We had to settle for men walking on the crummy moon. (Russell Beland,
Springfield)
In my day, we didn’t have days. There was only time for work, time for
prayer and time for sleep. The sheriff would go around and tell everyone when
to change. (Elden Carnahan, Laurel)
In my day, people could only dream of hitchhiking a ride on a comet. (David
Ronka, Charlottesville)
In my day, we didn’t have fancy health-food restaurants. Every day we
ate lots of easily recognizable animal parts, along with potatoes drenched
in melted fat from those animals. And we’re all as strong as AAGGKK-GAAK
Urrgh. Thud. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg)
In my day, we didn’t have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition
on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated. (Jon Patrick
Smith, Washington)
In my day, we didn’t get that disembodied, slightly ticked-off voice
saying ‘Doors closing.’ We got on the train, the doors closed, and
if your hand was sticking out it scraped along the tunnel all the way to the
Silver Spring station and it was a bloody stump at the end. But the base fare
was only a dollar. (Russell Beland, Springfield)
In my day, we didn’t have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen
and oxygen atoms. (Diana Hugue, Bowie)
In my day, we didn’t have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did. (Peg
Sheeran, Vienna)
Kids today think the world revolves around them. In my day, the sun revolved
around the world, and the world was perched on the back of a giant tortoise.
(Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park)
In my day, we wore our pants up around our armpits. Monstrous wedgies, but
we looked snappy. (Bruce Evans, Washington)
Back in my day, ‘60 Minutes’ wasn’t just a bunch of gray-haired
liberal 80-year-old guys. It was a bunch of gray-haired liberal 60-year-old
guys. (Russell Beland, Springfield, & Jerry Pannullo, Kensington)
In my day, we didn’t have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian
warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope to God you could
outrun him. (Sarah M. Wolford, Hanover)