I'll have to tell Antonio this when he gets older...
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 blizzards 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 around 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 beginning 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
lingerie 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!
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 blizzards 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 around 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 beginning 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
lingerie 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!
The memories, teh memories....
