I didn't write this, but I'm almost the same age as the writer, and I feel his pain...
BACK IN 1987....
> 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!
> I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet-we wanted to know
> something, we had to go to the 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 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 jack off 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
> 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 was no such thing as stadium
> seating! All the seats were the same height! A tall guy sat in front
> of you, you were fucked!
> 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 1987!!
