It's official, I've become my father. For years I listened to him complain about how my generation had it easy. He'd have to walk miles through the snow, barefoot, uphill,so on and so on. Here's the speech I gave my daughter when she complained about how tough her life was.
When I was a kid we didn't have internet. No email or instant messaging. You wanted to mail something you walked to the mail box. A stamp cost money. and it could be weeks before you got a reply. You actually had to use pen and paper. The only spell check you had was a dictionary.As for that book report, you had to go to the library and use the card catalog to find the relevant books. If you wanted to back up your information you had to use carpon paper and hope you could read the copy.
Child Protective Services didn't care what happened to kids. Not only could your parents beat you, but they gave permission to the parents of your friends to beat you.You had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. Your friends would even sell you out to avoid a beating.
We didn't have Ipods or mp3. If we wanted music, we'd have to go to the record store and steal it to get it free! Ever try getting an album down your pants? Of course you could listen to the radio all day and hope to record a song. It was not worth the time because the DJ would just talk over the beginning and end of the songs. We had no CD's. We did have cassettes. Only problem was every cassette player was designed to eat a cassette after so many plays.
Call waiting and Caller Id did not exist. You call someone on the phone, you got a busy signal you were SOL (shit outta luck). You had no voice mail, so you would have to call back. Over and over and over, damn get off the phone already! When the phone rang you had to pick it up to find out who it was. The teacher, principal, drug dealer, or the cops? Who knew? Couldn't let the answer machine get it, We had none, so you couldn't even erase the message.
Gaming systems? Ha! If that's what you wanted to call them. We had Atari 2600. We played "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids". We only had a square as our man. No fancy figures you could customize. We only had one level that just got harder and harder. You would never beat the game.
Remote for TV? We had to get up and walk to the TV to change the channel. We had to read a TV Guide to find out what was on. If two shows you wanted to watch were on at the same time you were SOL again. You couldn't Tivo one. You could only watch one and hope for a rerun of the other down the road.
We didn't have Cartoon Network. Saturday mornings were the only time cartoons were on. And they we crude compared to what is on today.If we had family plans on Saturday I missed my weekly cartoons you spoiled rat bastard. I Want My Cartoons Damn It!
When we were hungry, we had to use a stove. It was called cooking back then. You'd spend minutes warming water for tea. Do they even make tea pots that whistle anymore? Dinner could take an hour to cook. Why you ask? Cause we didn't have a friggin microwave! TV dinners went into the oven for 20 minutes not a microwave for 3 minutes. There was a chance we could starve to death before dinner was ready!
I realized after this little rant that it was indeed official. I had become my father. In hind sight, that's not a bad thing at all. RIP Dad I'll carry the torch.
