Joe Willie On The Shrimpbox: "Never Had it So Good"

"Never Had It So Good"

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 .. 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
bull 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.
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!

There were no MP3s or Napsters! 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'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*%
it all up!

We didn't have fancy stuff 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 Boxes 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" and
the graphics sucked !

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.

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 or some old broad with a hat 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 15 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 bum and walk over to the TV
to change the channel and 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 fools!

And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat
something up, we had to use the stove or go build
a frigging fire ... imagine that!

If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid
JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove forever
like an idiot.

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!

Regards,
The over 30 Crowd