When I was a kid...

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;



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!

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 or iTunes! 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 @#*% 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?

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!

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 GOD !!!

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.

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!

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!

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?!?!

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-finks!

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

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 luckily, 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

(Send this to someone you'd like to make smile)

When I was a kid adults didn't talk to us.

We didn't have a car so went nowhere. The nearest bus stop was a long way away.

We didn't have a refrigerator but that didn't matter as food was on ration so we went hungry a lot of the time.

We didn't know what sweets and crisps were so we didn't miss them. Mind you, it saved on the expense of the dentist.

We daren't get ill because going to the doctor cost money. And you had to be half dead before adults would call out a doctor because of the cost.

We didn't have a telephone at home so couldn't talk to our friends, and the nearest phone box was a long walk away.

We didn't have a television and the adults had the radio on only on special occasions.

But we survived.

I wonder how?



ps - don't bother sending this to any kids because they won't believe you! :lol:

And another one...

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 1940's, and 50's!

First, we survived being born to mothers who drank and smoked while they carried us, and lived in houses made of asbestos.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes....

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.

As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle....

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds , KFC, Subway or Nandos.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death.

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.

We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.
We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because.......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.

No one was able to reach us all day. And we were OK.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video/dvd films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms...........

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...

We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

RUGBY and CRICKET had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on

MERIT

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'.

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore :evil:

When I was a kid....

Sweets were much bigger..like wagon wheels..gob-stoppers...

Girls wore pitails so boys could pull them

We went behind the bike shed for a crafty fag..

I wore short trousers to junior school..

Holes in trousers were stitched...the repair always showing....

We ate tin peaches with ice cream in front of the fire,after bath, on Sunday evening...

We showed respect for those in authority...

We went Scrumping in the local orchards....

I was alway told to Be Quiet as my dad slept during the day because he worked night shift ....

Ready Steady Go was the first pop show I saw on TV....

The first television advert was for Pepsodent Toothpaste...Youll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent ....xxxx

tonypark wrote:

When I was a kid....
The first television advert was for Pepsodent Toothpaste...

The start of ITV and the very first television advertisement. The start of ITV being planned to coincide with with the death of Grace Archer in The Archers radio programme, Grace being burned to death in a barn fire IIRC.

Well, one or other of them was planned first. The start of ITV and the death of Grace Archer. Sort of who gets most viewing/listening?

Not that much has changed...

Gandra wrote:

tonypark wrote:

When I was a kid....
The first television advert was for Pepsodent Toothpaste...

The start of ITV and the very first television advertisement. The start of ITV being planned to coincide with with the death of Grace Archer in The Archers radio programme, Grace being burned to death in a barn fire IIRC.

Well, one or other of them was planned first. The start of ITV and the death of Grace Archer. Sort of who gets most viewing/listening?

Not that much has changed...

Im still listening to The Archers twice a day...2 pm and 7 pm xxxx