If You're 30 or older, You Might Find This is Hilarious!

I’m a little older than most of the people on this post. I’ll be retiring in a couple of years. This post does bring back some good memories.

I grew up in San Francisco. When I was a kid, a punk was a teenager that wore a white tee-shirt with a cigarette pack rolled up in his sleeve.

The pill hadn’t been invented. I didn’t learn about sec until the “older” kids told me, and I didn’t believe them.

We used to play football in the fall and baseball in the spring. Basketball was good any time of the year. We didn’t have organized leagues, uniforms, real fields, umpires. Our parents didn’t come watch us play. Our parents didn’t seem to mind us heading out on Saturday morning and not coming back till dinner time.

We would build coasters and race them down the streets of the city. Our dads would help us build these totally unsafe vehicles, mostly letting us figure out how to do it by ourselves. Crashes happened pretty often.

We climbed trees and sometimes fell out. We built tree forts in the city parks. Almost everyone I knew broke a bone or two in their youth.
We played baseball on the street. First base was a telephone pole and third base was a car fender. We didn’t have umpires or uniforms and solved disputes by ourselves.

We ride our bikes all over the city and our parents didn’t know where we were. We would ride the bus downtown and catch the Saturday movie which was usually a double feature. Movie, popcorn and a soda would cost 50 cents.

As we got older, we joined the junior high sports teams. We wore converse tennis shoes to run track and cross country. Our cross county uniform was a tee-shirt.

Times were different. We had fun and most of us survived.


[edit on 19-3-2010 by Wildbob77]

My five year old can use a laptop. He also beats me at video games. The thing is, he is still a kid. He wants to play outside, ride his bike, go swimming, play with cars, and all the other stuff a kid should want to do. It really is on the parent. If you allow your child to watch tv and play video games all day, then that is on you and your parenting. It is crazy how things have changed. I was happy as a kid and I'm happy now as a woman. Things will always change and there will always be people who will never be happy with the situation, no matter what it is.

LMAO this is so true, yipeeee I'm in the over 30's crowd (only by a year though ) its funny because my 2 younger brother's ages 10 and 12 who have everything a kid could want i.e laptops xbox360's, d.s, all the latest games etc never stop complaining of how bored they are its like they have so much to choose from they dont wanna play with none of it and get bored lol, spoilt some may say yeah I think they are, some kids today don't realise how good they got it.

reply to post by 2manyquestions


That was bitchen. It brought back a flood of stuff. When I was young and went outside I did not go to a friends house to play video games and your folks thought you were outside but we played football in the street. "run to the front fender of the Buick and cut inside"

Speaking off Buick's, families only had one car! Can you imagine?

Rode bikes (If I still had the baseball cards I clipped to the front forks to make it sound like a motorcycle I would be a rich man today!)

Regarding phones, if you picked up yours and heard a conversation going on you had to hang up and wait for the party-line to be available (or listen in on their conversation). Oh, and the phone number 785-6206 was ST-56206. And check this out, people actually had to memorize other peoples phone numbers.

My folks called the fridge the "icebox".

Butcher shops, BarberShops, a kid pulling a wagon around with Sunday newspapers for sale, a 9'8" Hobi surfboard, not your custom speed & cut boards of today.

We had to get our pictures "developed"

One thing that we DID have that the young today do not, we pulled into a gas station and told the attendant: "Give me $2.65 of gas and check the tires and oil".

No FM/stereo.

The NBC peacock was the first time people saw something "In Living Color".

Onandonandonandon.....................Thanks for the thread!

yak055h

To the OP-
May I ask, as i child, how many times were YOU: shot at, chased by groups of people YEARS older than you, given drugs to stash, skipped school to flip some of what you got cause you have to do what you have to do to get by.

How many times did your mother tell you there would be no supper that evening because your father blew all of the grocery money on blow?

Kids are having it easier today? Their parents are going crazy wasting time and money on things that will never better humanity.

This is a load of generalized bull#.

Kids today couldn't have survived in 1980???? PLEASE! Stop acting like things were that bad back then, When today we have corporations openly running government, wars over an energy source that isnt even NECESSARY.

How can you say the world is any better present day?

Nothing pointed out in the email is relevant. This post is nothing more than bashing the youth of today, and i ask the mods that it be (EDIT) moved to another section because it deals not with philosophy nor the metaphysical world.

[edit on 19-3-2010 by thunderabove]

[edit on 19-3-2010 by thunderabove]

Ah, the good old days...

We didn't even have color TV... it was an old black-and white Zenith. Dad promised when it went out he would get a color set, but they made things to last back then... we finally gave up on it giving up and gave it away.

We had 2 1/2 channels... two would come in and the last one would come in half the time. Usually the screen was snowy. And if it got too bad, someone went outside to the antenna and turned it by hand while someone inside watched the screen to say when to stop. Somehow, I was never the guy sitting inside watching the screen...

Of course, that meant that if the President was giving a speech, the night was shot.

The news came on at 5:00 and 10:00. Thirty minutes each time. Parents loved to watch the news back then too.

There were no home movies either. If you wanted to watch a movie, you had to go to the theater, and they usually didn't get the movies here until they were playing everywhere else for a couple weeks.

Speaking of movies, let's talk special effects. You had to use more of that imagination. I still remember the Six Million Dollar Man running at 80 mph down the street... of course, the actual picture you saw was a slo-mo of him running, a few clips of a speedometer, and that "NANANAnanananana... NANANANAnananana..." sound.

(I actually showed my kids a clip of that show a while back. They looked at me like I was crazy!)

No porn. Period. No Internet to download it from, and you had to go to the rough side of town to get a magazine. And even then, you better have a deep voice and a beard, or they wouldn't sell it to you. No, we had to make do with pin-up's and the lingerie section of the Sears and Roebuck catalog!

A Fredericks of Hollywood flyer was worth three packs of Marlboros!

We had a party-line telephone. That meant that if you wanted to make a call, you had to pick it up and listen first, because someone a few houses away might be using the line. that also meant you had to be careful what you said, because someone might pick up and hear it.

I never got a car for my birthday! I did get one from my folks, but it was an old 67 VW Bug that barely ran and permission to use Dad's tools to fix it.

My bicycle was the frame of an old 20" Spyder-style bike that I turned into a racing bike. Using parts I found laying alongside the road of course, My old bike shop is still in the loft of the barn.

Our idea of insurance was being careful.

When it got cold, there was no thermostat to switch on and receive warmth. We got to build a fire in the wood stove, using firewood we cut form the mountain behind us the months before. My pay for carrying the wood back to the trailer was that I could huddle up to the stove in the winter.

No air conditioner. We had a fan, and I usually didn't get to be in front of it anyway. I was outside hoping for a cool breeze. Shade trees were wonderful things!

If you wanted ice, you had to get it out of the freezer. And if you ever forgot to fill the ice trays back up, you went without ice for a while. You also were careful not to use too much; it took a hour or two to freeze back. Too much too fast and everyone went without.

We didn't get a shower until I was 14. We had a bathtub. Bathing took a lot longer back then.

There was no pre-cooked food. No TV dinners, no frozen pizza... heck, I was a teenager before I ever knew what pizza was!

Oh, and when you first got into trouble with the law... they would call your folks to make sure it was OK, then throw you in the slammer and make you think you were going away for life for stealing that candy bar! Then the next morning your folks would show up and ask you if you had learned your lesson.

Mowing yards for money? Man, you had it easy! I hauled hay for pocket money, after riding my bike across a small mountain to just get to the hayfield. Then, after spending an entire day lugging around 100+ pound bales of hay, I got to ride back across the same mountain to get home. I was getting, I think, $3 an hour.

We didn't wear helmets. That was why we had skulls.

If you went to the doctor, it was because you were about dead. And no matter what was wrong, the first step was an injection in the butt.

If you were feeling sick enough to stay home from school, that was OK; you were sick. Of course, being sick meant drinking a friggin' gallon of castor oil, one spoonful at a time to get the maximum taste benefit from it.

You only said the words "I'm bored" once in your life. Because as soon as you said it, your folks fixed the boredom problem... with three days worth of the dirtiest, nastiest chores they could think of.

Ah, memories of the 'good 'ol days'... thank you, OP, for posting this thread.

Oh, and for the guy who mentioned the Cold War... that was no real problem. Flimsy wooden school desks were apparently radiation- and explosion-proof.

TheRedneck

Originally posted by TheRedneck
We didn't wear helmets. That was why we had skulls.

So you are saying that it was better to leave the most important part of your body completely unprotected while riding quickly on a concrete surface? That sir. is not denying igorance.

This thread, is not denying ignorance, it is supporting it.

Looking back is ignorant.

EDIT to add: And selfish! you have no idea what i would give to have had the opportunity to grow up at an earlier point in time.

[edit on 19-3-2010 by thunderabove]

Originally posted by TheRedneck
The news came on at 5:00 and 10:00. Thirty minutes each time. Parents loved to watch the news back then too.

Ahh, the good old days...when the news was "the news" and not "the opinion"

Great thread OP!

S&F

Originally posted by restless genius
LMAO this is so true, yipeeee I'm in the over 30's crowd (only by a year though ) its funny because my 2 younger brother's ages 10 and 12 who have everything a kid could want i.e laptops xbox360's, d.s, all the latest games etc never stop complaining of how bored they are its like they have so much to choose from they dont wanna play with none of it and get bored lol, spoilt some may say yeah I think they are, some kids today don't realise how good they got it.

How is it not obvious to you that kids do NOT have it that good these days?? If your younger brothers have all of these technological toys, but yet are continuously bored of them, does this not strike you as something that you would NOT have wanted as a kid? Your brothers were probably brought up on TV and videogames. This is why they are bored. Had they been brought up playing outside and doing regular kid things, and then started the whole video game thing LATER, they wouldn't be the way they are.

Sorry for ranting/rambling, i really just dislike the message that this thread portrays.

reply to post by thunderabove


Whinge, Whinge, Whinge, Cry, Cry, Cry

You sound like a youngster living in these times and yes, kids do have it easier these days.. no doubt in my mind...

Note: - The above is said, just as a generation above me would have said the same and you will be saying the same about the next generation...

Anyway, i am in the 30's crowd and u know your getting old when you turn your car radio on to what u would listen to when u younger and u find yourself saying "what is this S***" and then find yourself turning the station to the best of the 70's, 80's and 90's

reply to post by thunderabove


Some of us actually thought the OP was funny. Some people have a sense of humor.
So you think the mods should shut down this thread because you're offended?
Maybe you should switch to decaf.

reply to post by thunderabove


My brother's were bought up playing outside, football tennis etc... and they still do but when there at home sometimes they have so much to choose from they dont know what to play with so they say their bored, its a case of having too much to choose from I think, as for your rant I do think you are taking this a bit seriously and need to chill out a bit.

reply to post by thunderabove

So you are saying that it was better to leave the most important part of your body completely unprotected while riding quickly on a concrete surface? That sir. is not denying igorance.

No, it is called 'reminiscing'. All these things that you are reading and thinking "this is cruel" about are the things that endear us to our youth. Why? Because we have some pride in the fact that we learned from the hardships and became better and stronger because of them.

I never heard of anyone dying from a head injury while on a bicycle. Never. Not once. And I myself have had a french kiss or two with asphalt. I got up, picked up what was left of my bike, wiped the blood out of my eyes, and walked home. It hurt, yes. But it didn't kill me.

To this day, I have a slight half-moon scar in the middle of my forehead. It came from the business end of a rifle scope mounted on a .444 Marlin lever-action rifle. I was showing off to some friends target shooting and thought the scope might be off, so I concentrated on the regular sights instead. The scope was about an inch from my head when I squeezed the trigger.

It hurt. It bled pretty good for a few minutes. It even addled me for a couple seconds. But I never saw a doctor, never had stitches, didn't even stop shooting. I was just more careful afterward.

Stupid? Yep. But I learned from it. Learning is never stupid.

This thread, is not denying ignorance, it is supporting it.

I disagree. This thread is about a growing problem with youth. They, you, have it so easy in many respects compared to what we had back then, and yet you mention in a previous post all the crime and violence that kids today have to face.

There was violence back then as well, my friend. I have been cut. I have been shot at. But I learned quickly to stay away from those areas that could get me seriously hurt, at least until I was strong enough and tough enough to venture there.

Looking back is ignorant.

Not looking back is ignorant. How do you know if you are going the right direction, if you don't know where you started? Or where you want to be.

EDIT to add: And selfish! you have no idea what i would give to have had the opportunity to grow up at an earlier point in time.

You know, technology may have changed, crime may be worse, but people have not changed. One can still live the same way we did, and even better by using the newer technology. But in order to maintain the lifestyle we had back then, with all the pleasures that came with it, one must accept that things do not always come easy in life. Sometimes you have to work for the things that you really need.

I mentioned that old VW. The turn signals didn't work when I got it, and while trying to fix them I discovered the world of electronics. All from a little black box that controlled the flashing electronically that I knew nothing about. I never fixed that black box; I rewired it and made a bracket to hold a regular flasher so I could drive it on the road. But it put me on a path that has led to a lifetime of work in electronics and power systems, something I dearly enjoy.

Today, my father would probably have just drove to town and gotten a new one for me to keep me 'safe'. Thank God Almighty my dad didn't do that. I would never have ripped the cover off it and discovered a whole new world inside.

A generation is built upon the good and the bad that it has to deal with. Your choices are based on your actions, not on the times, not on other people. Learn that lesson, and the others will come.

TheRedneck


[edit on 3/19/2010 by TheRedneck]

reply to post by TheRedneck

I was a teenager before I ever knew what pizza was!

OMG that's too funny. I remember in the early 60s, there was a cool, trendy family that lived down the street. They had more money than most of us in the neighborhood. One evening, 2 of the kids came outside eating pizza. I had never seen it before!

reply to post by r3dman


LMAO

[edit on 19-3-2010 by restless genius]

reply to post by thunderabove


It really sounds like you have had a rough life and I'm truly sorry to hear that. However, there is nothing wrong with reminiscing and talking about how times have changed. By asking the mods to remove this thread you are asking them to take away the rights to our own opinions. Nobody is asking you to read through this now are they? My advice to you would be to read something else if this offends you so much. Everybody is entitled to their own thoughts and opinions...just like you.

reply to post by thunderabove


It was meant as "humorous" not as an indictment............sheeeesh!

Hahaha!

Awesome!

But he completely forgot about mentioning porn and few other things. Kids nowadays just click and voila! Instant strip... so easy.

We on the other hand had either to develop the courage and find the right moment to be able to get a Playboy or a Penthouse magazine (worths noting that most of the times a fashion magazine would suffice) and pray that the owner of the place selling those magazines didn't hang us by the ears or keep peeping our neighbors window for weeks to get a glance of a boob without getting caught.

Anyway... I'm feeling old now

This is a great thread - fun memories.

I think the thing that sticks out the most for me when I was a kid, was the non-issue of being outside with friends and "out of sight" meaning, none of us had to stick close to home. We could be gone all day and as long as we made it back for dinner (and than after dinner, back by dark) we were golden... Nobody really worried about that being "dangerous".... as they do now.

Bottom line, you had it better back in the 60s 70s 80s.

I wasn't trying to say it was easier back then, just better.

You have NEVER heard of a child becoming brain damaged from not wearing a HELMET? Really??????????

Life for youth today = No jobs, super controlling parents/government, hate, HORRIBLE LOOKING FUTURE

Life for youth of 60s 70s 80s = carefree, less technology to deal with, love and happiness, bright effing future

this is just ridiculous, i thought this site was about denying ignorance. I guess not anymore.

NOTHING that is available for the youth of today that was NOT available for the youth of 20-30-40 years ago makes life ANY BETTER for the youth of today

and btw this isnt philosophizing ANYTHING and doesn't deal with metaphysics in the slightest.

EDIT: yes! and this thread is NOTHING BUT reminiscing, which, unless i am wrong but do not believe i am, does not belong in philosophy or metaphysics.

This post belongs in a forwarded chain email that i instantly delete, NOT ATS.






[edit on 19-3-2010 by thunderabove]