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--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!
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