From the Rowdies in the Back of the Bus

Barrie sent a little message for anyone who entered childhood after 1980:

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'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, we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damned library and look it up ourselves!

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!

There were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the damn 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 f@#* 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! 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 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

We didn't have any fancy Sony Play station 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! If a tall guy sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed!

Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 20 channels and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! 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 and there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning...

...D'ya hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK, you spoiled little bastards!

We didn't have microwaves. If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove. Imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop and shake it over the stove like an idiot forever.

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!
____

Here's a little bit of high-brow humor for you.
_____

For Zen Master Ken, here's a little post to inspire you as you are writing "The Zen of Ken." (A tip of the cap to Joe Katzman.)
_____

Phantom has a cause you might want to support. Heh!
_____