My older sister sent this to me via old-school viral marketing: The email forward.
Since I couldn’t find a well-formatted version on the Web, I’m sharing it with you on my blog:
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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 thirty, 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!!
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!
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!
There were no MP3′ s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the damn 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 screw 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 the tape would come undone. Cause – that’s how we rolled, 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!
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, mister!
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘Asteroids’. 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!
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!!!
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-bastards!
That’s exactly 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 or before!
Regards,
The Over 30 Crowd
Wife (30) and I (34) still can't stop laughing. Add: if your radio couldn't record the station directly, you had to put two radios face to face and make sure you had absolute silence while recording! Thanks so much for sharing.
lol. As I approach the ripe old threshold you speak of, I can't help but reminisce, back when email was the big new thing–and now, you're calling it old-school viral marketing, and rightfully so.
Especially in light of the old news that some colleges are no longer giving their students an email address.
So both Alice and Jackie gave you a mention, and I decided to come here to see what the fuss is all about. Old fashioned viral marketing (word of mouth from two fabulous ladies), enabled by the internet (which is how I got to know them, and lucky to have met 1 already).
I did 2 rounds at the Uni too – once pre-internet, once post-internet. The latter was faster and allowed me to multitask but I still think spending time poring over robotics papers, on paper, for my undergrad thesis, somehow made me more familiar with them than the web made me with decision-making (my research specialisation).
In the summer of 2004 I did some work with a lobbying firm where the MD and I were the only two people who wore Ray Bans. What do we know? Now every TDH is wearing a Ray Ban tortoise shell, whereas I savour my vintage piece from 1994. Net net, there are great advantages to being old I realise now (better late than never). Every fashion trend from gladiator sandals to Ray Ban tortoise shells is already in my wardrobe, in mint condition, bought at much cheaper prices from around the world than they sell for now.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.. I would title the post "the Deprived under 30 crowd". 😉
LMAO…
I remember in college how my dorm room had dial up internet and I was grateful damn it!! GRATEFUL
You went to a Grateful Dead concert with 10 kids in a Country Squire station wagon, separated during the concert (among other things) and had to meet back at the car at 1AM without the use of cell phones or you'd get left in the parking lot.
Hilarious and true! Don't forget playground equipment. It was made of steel and splintering wood. And underneath was gravel. And if you fell you got a big bruise or a small cut if you were lucky. No brightly colored plastic with rounded corners and foam "fall flooring".