BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh

Subject: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 01:27 PM

My daughter who is 32 sent me this:

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!!!
          If you are 30 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!!

          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.

          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 catalogue!!

          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 @#*% 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!

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

          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

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 01:32 PM

Aye kids these days! Romote controls? Luxury!
Anyone remember actually having to get up of your arse, and turn the record over?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: SINSULL
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 01:46 PM

One of the apartments in my building had a leak from a bathroom shower down into a neighbor's bedroom. These apartments had 2 1/2 baths so the offending tenant was asked to stop using the shower in that bath. The horrified response: "You can't expect my daughter and me to share a bath????"

LOL
I grew up with 10 people and one bath.


And from Kendall will come "You had a bathroom?"

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: MMario
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 01:51 PM

welll - I heard a teen the other day complaining because they couldn't program ALL features of their TIVO from their cell phone.   She didn't believe me when I told her you used to have to physically install a tape in a VCR and then MANUALLY cue the recordings in order to record a TV show.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Amos
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 01:57 PM

WHen I was young, if you wanted a record of somemusic youhad to go carve it out of flint using a rock and a sharpened flint to inscribe it with. Then to play it back, first you had to tame a bengal tiger....



A

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 02:06 PM

But remember the days when, if we wanted to see the Wizard of Oz again, we had to wait until the once yearly television airing?

I wouldn't want to go back to those olden times. My world was so much smaller without the internet.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: gnu
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 02:17 PM

Along the same lines... about ten years ago, my buddy's son of about 12 asked to use the phone. We were in the cellar and it was on the wall in the next room. A moment of silence was followed by, "Uh, Dad, can you come here for a minute?" laughter ensued as the Old Fellah" taught him how to use a rotary phone.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 02:41 PM

Operator: "Number, please"

Me: "329-J" (my phone # in New Orleans in 1947)

Operator: "Thank you, I'm connecting you"

At that time we had ONE radio, (Philco..wooden case, took up a lower shelf on a table) which I lay down on the rug to listen to. On Sunday, my father & I traded off on whether I got to hear The Lone Ranger, or he got to hear Jack Benny.

No...I wouldn't like to go back to those days. I LOVE my little (maybe 1" thick)(digital 7" portable TV which also scans and gives me several hundred channels, plus all the ones it can find in over-the-air broadcasts...with sleep timer, brightness controls, automatic closed-caption-when muted setting...etc.

I LOVE being able to sit in my chair & get text messages from across the country....

All that being said, I think schools need to instill a sense of relevance and history that will help show kids some of the reasons WHY people did what they did when all this stuff was only science fiction. Not comprehending what the pace of technology actually does, is a major limiting factor for many folks. There is evidence that everything from attention span to stress levels to coherent use of language is being affected.



(soap box? what soap box? *grin*)

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: MMario
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 02:54 PM

In my home town, we hated it when rotary came *IN* - up until then we could just pick up the phone and chances were very good we would get Either Aunt Alba or Aunt Nora - so it would just be "HI! It's me, Can you give me Gram? (or whoever we needed to speak to. Rotary dial mean t so much more work....and in the movies it was only the CLASSY people that had live operators. It seemed a real letdown to go to dial.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 02:58 PM

What ever happened to jiffy pop popcorn? A thing we never had because it was too expensive. My dad just "burned" ours on the stove in a big saucepan with crisco oil.

I cannot imagine a world without microwave popcorn.

As an aside I would like to take this opportunity to complain about popcorn in cinemas in the UK.

It is NOT fresh and hot and they have only 2 kinds, sweet and savoury. What's up with that?

Where's the butter?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: katlaughing
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:10 PM

Good points, Bill! That sounds like a nifty little "toy."

VTam, my dad always burned the popcorn, too, and my mom spent the rest of the evening complaining about the stink.:-)

After reading the amount of salt etc. in microwave popcorn, we've gone back to plain old popped in a saucepan, but my Rog doesn't burn it, thank goodness, and we use olive oil, so I think it's probably healthier than what we had growing up.

I remember our phone number being CH(erry)4-0497 in the early 60s.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: GUEST,Tunesmith
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:10 PM

I get the impression that more Americans had personal phones way back when than in Britain. I can still recall the - hundreds of -times I've stood outside an occupied phone booth in the pouring rain waiting to ring up a girlfriend.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Becca72
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:23 PM

VTam...Jiffy Pop is still around. It was "too expensive" at my house also. We had a basket thingie and made popcorn on the wood stove until the year my mother sprung for a hot air popper.

Becca, who is still in her 30s.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: gnu
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 03:57 PM

I had a hot air popcorn popper in the yard sale... 50 cents... I still have it.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Newport Boy
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 04:19 PM

You're right, Tunesmith. In 1958 (while I was in London) my father went over to Bristol for the day. He was amazed to discover that he could dial direct from Bristol to Newport (20 miles as the crow flies) and had to try it out.

After a lot of thought, he phoned the Working Mens Club - the steward ran up the street to tell my mother. This was the only phone he knew - on an estate of 400 houses, no-one we knew had a phone. There were about 20 plus 3 phone boxes.

Phil

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Anne Lister
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 04:40 PM

My nephew is spending his year abroad as part of his languages degree. He was very upset at the thought of missing his friends and family while he's away. I pointed out that when I did MY time abroad, there was no internet, no FaceBook, no digital photography and no cell phones. Very few people had answerphones, either. My flat in Lyon in France had no phone, so if I wanted to talk to my parents or friends I had to walk to the main post office, queue up for the chance to use one of their international booths and hope when I dialled the UK that someone would be in to talk to me. And it was expensive, too.
He's posting up his blog while he's in Brussels as well as posting photos to FaceBook - AND he's talking in terms of coming back to his uni (Durham) for a weekend in term time. Unheard of!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Bill D
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 05:22 PM

"
I get the impression that more Americans had personal phones way back when than in Britain."

Probably so. This country is so large, and communications were so hard in the 1800s and early 1900s, that every effort was made to build a system...and the first systems were designed BY Americans like Bell. We had 'general' access most places, and decent access in cities as part OF becoming 'of age' as a country.   

The transcontinental telegraph lines were already in place in the late 1800s, so phone lines could easily follow the same basic routes. (My father set poles and strung telegraph lines from the 1930s to the 1950s.)



I remember one time, as a small child, using a telephone similar to this. I 'think' it was at a rural farm in S.E. Kansas, where we were visiting one of my mother's old school friends.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 05:39 PM

Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland. He may have lived in the US for a while, but was he an American?

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Amergin
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 05:55 PM

When I was a kid yes there were cartoons on saturday morning...but there were also cartoons in the afternoon on weekdays...

Also, my grandparents had a microwave oven...however it didn't have all the fancy settings that they have nowadays....

to add there were none of these massive online role playing games...when people wanted to play a game, a bunch would gather in some guy's basement and roll these funny shaped dice in order to advance the story...and the leader of the group (in D & D was called a Dungeon Master), would read from a module to explain to us what we were doing...or if he was really good would tell us straight from his own imagination....

Also neighbourhood kids got out more...did things instead of sitting at home on the computer all day....or the tv.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 06:38 PM

When I was a kid, we were so poor that we had to do with a black and white radio!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: GUEST,Goran (not Guran)
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 07:38 PM

Being only 24 I don't remember a lot of this stuff (we might have had a rotary telephone, but I couldn't have been more than about 8 when we got rid of it), but I do remember we had a posh video machine. It was posh because it had a remote, on a cord.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: frogprince
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 08:43 PM

We had one a them phones like on Bill's link on the farm. I can't for the life of me remember whether I ever made a call on it myself, or if we had a dial phone by the time I was old enough. I'm sure I talked to "Gramma" on the old style after one of my folks made the connection.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Joe_F
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 08:52 PM

When I was in college, if you prodded into the mouthpiece of a pay phone with a 1200-ohm resistor, the other end of which was grounded, you got a free dial tone, saving a nickel.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: HuwG
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:04 PM

UK-only joke

Emergency services, which service do you require?

Fire brigade I think - MY FINGER'S STUCK IN THE 9 HOLE!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Leadfingers
Date: 30 Sep 09 - 09:52 PM

I had left home WELL before my parents had a Telephone ! OR a Fridge

But UK always was well behnd our Rich cousins over the pond !!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Ebbie
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 12:47 AM

"Alexander Graham Bell was born on March 3, 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland, and educated at the universities of Edinburgh and London. He immigrated to Canada in 1870 and to the United States in 1871."

From Here



He died in Canada by the way.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: eddie1
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 01:49 AM

Ain't coincidence a woderful thing? If you have a quick look at my post to "Older Peoples Day" you'll see I now need to put a radio show together for 1000 and it's now 0645!
Music was not a problem but I was stuck for links. Thanks to you guys I now have plenty of material!

Eddie

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: GUEST,Edthefolkie
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 07:12 PM

If any UK Catters feel nostalgic for old style public phones, the working one in a red phone box at Crich Tramway Museum in Derbyshire was still there last time I looked.

It takes 20p pieces, not old pennies, but button A works! Goes down a storm with the under 30s, my kids phoned home on it once (after dialling instruction).

The REAL police Tardis-type telephone box across the tracks is pretty good too. Unfortunately the inside is the same size as the outside so presumably the flux capacitor's gone wrong or something.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Alice
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 08:11 PM

Typewriter, carbon paper for copies, white out

I remember having to start over and over again on typing pages
that had to be PERFECT with no white out or erasures. Thank goodness we don't have to do that any more!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Tug the Cox
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 08:53 PM

Does anyone remember party lines? In the fifties our line was shared with a house down the road. If you picked up the phone you could hear a conversation going on if the party was already using it. My dad and the bloke down the road had to get together to work out how to divide the bill.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Bill D
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 09:00 PM

"Typewriter, carbon paper for copies, white out"

and mimeograph!! Talk about 'do-overs'!

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Joe_F
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 10:42 PM

There was a kind of goop you could paint over mistakes on a mimeograph master. It had a pleasant smell, too.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Amergin
Date: 01 Oct 09 - 11:41 PM

The grade school I went to up in North Idaho had a student phone....it was a rotary phone with no digits on the face...I would get so frustrated with that thing...because I needed to be able to see the numbers in order to dial properly....

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: quokka
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 12:03 AM

Four Yorkshiremen

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 10:03 AM

Thanks for that, quokka! I'd forgotten that skit. LMAO!

Along those lines, I remember when we girls had to keep our skirts closed with giant safety pins!:-)

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 01:51 PM

I remember older girls having to kneel to prove that their mini skirts were not too mini.

I remember I was not permitted to where trousers to school until I went to high school. In junior high (only in 8th grade) girls were permitted to wear

pant suits

I remember when boys got into trouble in the class, the teacher could make them duck walk (squat walk with hands tucked in arm pits - flapping stubby little wings, quacking) up and down the hall. When this happened, students were let out of the class rooms to line the hall and laugh and jeer.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: gnu
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 04:31 PM

I remember the Canada Fitness Test. I avoided it as i was fat. Bad move, because it came to the point where Mr. Peters, sadistic prick, made me do mine ALONE whilst all the other kids laughed and made comments about fat boy.

But, the last test was a 50 yard run. It was winter. I started from one end of the hall and Mr. Peters was at the other end, just in front of a wall. He said he would catch me. He did. He had his arm out to catch me and he was looking at his stop watch while I was at top speed. I launched myself into his gut with my shoulder and my knee into his nuts. He hit his head on the wall. When he woke up about 20 seconds later, he folded up in a fetal position. He got a week off, during which, my old man had a chat with him

We were the best of friends after that.

No... I declined the request to join the football team.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 04:49 PM

gnu, there were some bastards out there, weren't there? My brother was kneed in the kidneys by an elementary school teacher or principal, I can't remember which, but it was hard enough to hurt him and he's never forgotten. He wasn't fat, but he was just effeminate/scholarly enough in 1940/50s Wyoming to stand out and be held in contempt by the jock types.

Subject: RE: BS: For the Under30 crowd-Over30s will laugh
From: Alice
Date: 02 Oct 09 - 05:17 PM

We could not wear pants to school, even in high school, always dresses or skirts (and our uniform plaid pleated jumper in Catholic school).

When I went to college in 1970, we still had a Coed Handbook that required all female students to wear dresses, white gloves and hats if they left campus to go shopping in town. Of course, we were hippies by that time, so it was just a great source of laughter.