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

reply to post by 2manyquestions


lol I don't think the lack of seat-belts in cars is deserving of a 'good ol' days' reminiscing.

I'm on the wrong side of thirty now, and I must say I am happy that most under 30's I know are aware of their situation and grateful for their up bringing and environment.

I also notice there is a maturity in some that surpassed my crew in the day.

Of course there are always exceptions, and we understand and accept that, but I for one am impressed by some of the writing and discourse I have with the younger set. It's is proof in my books that all the thing "they have good/easy" is assisting human evolution.

Thumbs up from me - and you better look after me in retirement punks.

On the other note, I can't wait to start going back to toy stores with my daughter - the RC stuff they these days is awesome - truly missed out "in my day".

Nice post OP, some funny stuff.






[edit on 19-3-2010 by one_small_step]

I know someone who has been robbed/attacked over 10 times for phone and money and has been stabbed.

Not exactly a great childhood. Things are different, but there will always be good and bad in every generation.

[edit on 19-3-2010 by _Phoenix_]

hehe!

this guy talks about the difference between western families and non-western families, which reflects the difference in generations in the US as well.






[edit on 19-3-2010 by undo]

reply to post by 2manyquestions

That deserved a star if anything did. And I have to add to it, directed at those who are young and feel so ignored and misunderstood.

I think it is a recurring phenomenon that youth always think they know better. After all, they have spent their lives in the shadow of these people, people who make mistakes (as we all do) and they can now see all the evils in the world. And as adults now, they 'know' how to fix them, if only they could get the chance.

How do I know this? Because at one time I felt the same way. Those darn old guys! If they would only listen to me, I have the answer! It's so simple! Listen!! Listen to ME!!!

They did. They heard themselves when they were my age and idealistic about how things needed to be done. They remembered what they had thought and what they had said. They knew where I was in life, because they had been there. They had lived the phase I was experiencing. I had not lived the phase they were living.

They knew more than I did. Their teacher was the best there is: experience.

Now I find myself looking back at some of the statements made in this thread, and instead of returning the anger I see, I actually understand and sympathize with it. I was there once. I lived through the phase of life you are living now. I'm sure the situations were different, the people were different, the location was different, but the experience of life was all too familiar. I have been 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, ad infinitum. Have you been 40? 45?

No, you haven't.

It isn't 'fair', is it? Yes, I am afraid it is. because one day you too will have learned the lessons of that great teacher experience, and you will listen to those youth who challenge you that things are 'different' now, and how terrible it is to be young in these times and how your elders never listen... and you too will get that dreamy glaze in your eyes and smile, remembering the 'good old days' when you said the same thing.

Welcome to the Circle of Life.

TheRedneck

good thread

i had to read this to my husband and he laughed all the way through it..

I think this is an awesome thread !

I remember my Nintendo (I'm 27) and play Mario bros 1,2 or 3 swoosh !!
As if I'm on steroids.

I also remember like it was yesterday there was a building project going on. About 5000 new houses in rows or pairs. It was my and my friends playground. I've climbed on every roof available, up in cranes whatever we could think of.

My first introduction with a PC. was in high school and only then for about 1 hour a week. The result is now that my younger brother (9) can play magic with them and me

I Once stole a pack of chewing gum. Of course my mom found out and she took me back to the store and I had to apologize. ( I never stole again
Playing football, basketball, hide and seek ! Whaaaaa !!!

Thanks dude you made me remember the good all days.

I remember my friends actually went to the record store and stole LP's. I would never go into the store with them cause I thought they were idiots for even trying it. Funny thing is, they actually managed to pull it off!. It was hilarious watching them waddle out of the store with their trench coats on.

Yeah, I remember the m-80's and H-100's.
We used to attach them to big semi trucks as they drove past ... then BOOM and we'd run like hell into the woods.
I'll explain ... after a fashion ...
I grew up in a smallish suburb city that was still underdeveloped in many areas as far as the land goes.
We lived on a dead-end that bordered a huge open field, and that was adjacent to wooded land with old growth trees topping 50 to 60 feet.

It started out in the winter with "Bumper Skiing". Remember that? The plows hadn't cleaned up the street yet, (or mostly the snow came down for hours at a time and they just couldn't keep up) When vehicles stopped for the light we'd bend down low and sneak up to the rear and grab the bumper. Then, they took off .... and we took off with 'em! Hanging on for dear life sometimes. Then we got smart (okay, WE thought it was smart .... We were still essentially playing in traffic ... a big no no for any kid)
- we made a 10 foot rope with big knots every two feet and a hook with a release line so that the forward skier ( the one who sneaked up to hook it to the bumper) could disengage it when we reached the next intersection. People would honk and laugh and the unsuspecting driver towing us would always look around in total bewilderment. Once we got to the next light, we'd 'catch a bumper' for the ride back!

When we got caught by the cops bumper skiing we lost our favorite activity. The next time it snowed we start pelting the bigger vehicles (trucks, tractor-trailers) on that same road with snowballs. We stood right next to the road, arms full of ammunition, and as they passed we'd let 'em have it! Most didn't even stop. But, some did - with brakes screeching and a big, beer-bellied trucker swearing at us as he leaped out of his cab.
We ran! Fast and hard, Dropping the arm loads of snowballs behind us hoping to slow that cursing good ole boy down. Couldn't run home, he'd know where we lived. So we sprinted to the only real hiding place left. The tree house we made in the woods. It was a good half a mile from the road to our little sanctuary. That whole winter we escaped all but one time. And that guy was a cruel SOB. He saw us climb up to the tree house and after we wouldn't come down, he fraken set the tree on fire! A couple snowballs hit his rig and he's going to treat us like a witch tied to the stake during the Inquisition! I was never so scared in my life. (Well, not true. I have an Italian Mother. After being disciplined by her and her rolling pin, nothing compares ... ) But, I did think I was going to die in a painful blaze. Thankfully the guy left right after he set it alight. Probably didn't want to be caught burning six kids alive, the bloody bastaaad ...
Anyway ... we jumped from the middle of the ladder to ground and escaped the flames and ran to get my sister to call the fire house.
Then, winter ended ... no more snowballs. We turned to tomatoes taken from various gardens in the area. In about a week those ran out ... But, we were still restless.
One of the guys went to the fireworks store with his Dad and brought back two grosses of M-80's. That's 288! After throwing a few in the air, then under cans and such ... we got devious.
There was an old man who ALWAYS chased us off his side of the street when we walked by. Sometimes with a hose ... no kidding.
Well, he had an above ground pool .... See where I'm going??
A Golf ball, some duct tape and a moonless night spelled payback time!
All six of us crouched behind some bushes about 30 feet away and on the count of three .... One dude was so nervous he fracken dropped it at our feet after lighting it ... just as the rest threw ours into the pool. He screamed "Grenade!" in a giggling shout and pointed down at our feet. We all busted up laughing as we ran away ... to play another day.
This time ... with arrows!

I had received a Browning compound bow that Christmas. And 24 arrows with 24 razor sharp hunting tips. At 60 pounds fully retracted I could propel an arrow over 300 feet per second. Perfect for attaching M-80's ... And launch them 1800 feet in the air.
Oh, yeah ....
And sticking 'em in the sides of semi's as they passed by.
1 potato, two potato, three .....
BOOM!!!

The spring of that year I turned 12 years old.

Yeah, I was one crazy mofo. You don't know the half of it. And never will.

But, then there's ...
Remind me to tell you about the school Principal's car, the four dozen eggs and the homebuilt trebuchet indecent. Classic good and (mid)evil story.

I wouldn't say kids have it easy, sorta makes me cringe considering all the problems that exist. And if everyone thought the same, how is life going to get better for these kids who *know* they have it rough. Just because they have a cell phone and twitter doesn't mean life is any easier than when phones were corded, and it fact life is harder to deal with because of these things. People have killed themselves over cyber bullying. And since the internet is everywhere, and at the same time a place where people go to escape the world and its problems, where do you go? The information that the younger crowd has at their finger tips is staggering, honestly we're going to know a lot more than other generations did at much earlier ages.

Happiness is always something that is hard to come by, always has been. And also look at the sky rocketing rates of medicated children...did you guys have that in the older days? Something changed for the worse that people need drugs in order to exist in the world. 9 year olds on blood pressure medicine...

[edit on 19-3-2010 by ghaleon12]

reply to post by whitezombie93

Originally posted by whitezombie93

lol I don't think the lack of seat-belts in cars is deserving of a 'good ol' days' reminiscing.

It does if you survived it, bro!
We didn't have Ralph Nader and the consumer groups that we have today.
You may think we were living dangerously ... but, who knew?
Seatbelt was the strap Dad took off his pants as he was chasing you ... and gave you the belt ... in the seat (of your pants). Hehe.
There was never a really good place to run to ... besides ... he was way to fast.
But, in my house, better Dad than Mom. She left scars. Think I'm kidding??
Any Italians raised in a traditional household here?
Back me up on this one ...

Well, let's see....when I was a kid competition was the thing. If you only read at grade level you were considered "slow" ...you had to try out for sports...if you sucked you didn't make the team...dode ball was usually a death match.

Adults ruled...if you were rude or doing something awful, they could punish you on the spot.

Because there was competition, there was actual achievement...times you felt proud because you won fair and square and times you were so embarrassed becuse you were the last pick for teams. Great life lessons

You did the work in school or you failed...simple as that.

If you acted up in school..you were punished and the parent called who punished you again.

You had to talk to people with your actual mouth instead of virtually by texting. shopping...you had to actually go to the store which gave you time to reconsider an impulsive purchase.

hi, this is my first post in this forum and as my contribution to this thread, i decided to track down the origins of the quote in the OP. here's what i've found:

DaddyPlace

Bits & Pieces (Blogspot)

Bits & Pieces

Greg December 5th, 2008 at 5:32 pm Please give credit for this short essay/spoken word. It’s originally by Ernest Cline. He has a website that streams the original spoken word (much funnier when heard rather than read). Thanks.

Ernest Cline

reply to post by ghaleon12


It's been said that every generation has their own sets of trials and tribulations to deal with, and the generation before the current will always consider theirs the harder one to have lived through.
It is as true today as it was when my Dad was growing up .... and his Dad before him.
The only thing technology was supposed to do was to make tasks easier, not life.

I will say the core values and things that brought families together many times in a given week have been slipping away ... and I think technology plays a part in how family time has been reapportioned.
We had dinner, as a family, six nights a week. Mandatory. Or you didn't eat. Or be allowed to leave, either. Grounded.
My parents knew every single one of my friends, and their parents right up till the end of High School.
Technology's rise also gave us distractive entertainment. Games, Mp3 players, etc .... You know what I mean. It's easier for a kid to escape into whatever realm that multimedia offers ... and it beats listening to their parents lecture and piss and moan.

I don't have kids. I have a niece and nephew I helped raise by allowing their Parents (my Bro and his wife) drop them off five days a week, from 7am to 7pm while they worked ... until each kid started first grade. And after that saw them at least three times a week till I moved here to Az.
Even now, when the visit they know Uncle Mark doesn't allow gameboxes, or earphones or anything that pulls them from us spending time together.
They can bring them ... just not use them during our time together. And, yeah ... that includes while we're driving to the store, or walking the dogs ...
When they are in their room on their own time ... go for it.

Here's the point ... And it may seem so simple that you might think it is of no importance ..
Or, you may treat it like the epiphany it is meant to be:

Technology steals face time. And, every second of interaction we miss with our charges (Your kids, my Bro's kids, people we love and are responsible for) cannot be made up. EVER.
Read that again. Here:
Technology steals face time. And, every second of interaction we miss with our charges cannot be made up. EVER.
And that, in my view, is the biggest generational difference of the current age.
Thoughts?

reply to post by toreishi


Bravo!
Very cool find, toreishi !!
Thanks!
You're right ... much funnier when listened to!

reply to post by TheRedneck


Wow, Redneck ...

I am guilty of stereotyping in the worst way, and I must apologize.

Your name certainly belies your intelligence.
You probably just have ... like a red neck from too much sun or something.
'Cause the mind above is sharp as a tack.
Very eloquently put.

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
-Alexander Pope

I'll be 30 next year so to an extent I find this humorous...and feeling some what stoneage old from my childhood and teen years compared to todays youth.

Child of the 80s, teen of the 90s, kinda fun and creepy at the same time:

Cold War 80s.

Computers; closest thing I had as a child was a Talking Wiz Kid.
Family never had an Apple, but we did use them in Elementary, my first experience with drawing on a computer(black and white). Floppy disks were actually floppy. In middle school we played Oregon Trail. No torrented music until later on(late 90s), recording from the radio sucked(crackly, interupted and limited). The computer class that I took in H.S., was an "Emerging Technology" class.

VHS tapes for movies in the 80s and early 90s, and cds in the 90s.
Sometimes I still prefer VHS tapes, they seem to last longer around me.

Ipods I do really wish i had then, as carrying a walk/man and disc man, trying to not have it drop or have the cd skip was almost not worth talking it with me. Also, Cds really annoy me.

Music...had to find music the old fashion way, through friends, magazines, record stores, college radio stations, bootlegs, etc., not pretencious indies on Myspace that some settle for because they are desperate and tired of settling for radio music(which by the way woith the state of the economy and record companies, how it survives-ClearChannel owns it all).

Email? Not only until I was almost out of HS did I enjoy the comforts of E-mail. Owned my first computer at 17 years old, 1 gb. No Myspaces and Facebooks to 'network' on.

Cell phones as teens? Very rare I guess because they were so big then(very expensive too)! I am happy that all of the teens around me didn't have them, I do find people talking on them, all the time in public and all around narrating every step they make, annoying.

I still like to play Nintendo, N64 and Sega somtimes, even favoring it to what is the norm now(though I do love quality 3D graphics), and even owned an Atari(my first vid game console). I find playing a real guitar is more fun that video game guitars.

Spanking, was 'legal' by CPS! It sure helped disipline me(no... I wasn't beat just spanked or spankled by a wooden spoon or fly swater).

I can't complain about walking miles uphill in snowstorms, simply because I was raised in FL(flat and no snow).

Most of all I did remember in the 80s that MTV, actually played music!


I agree with others, saying the just because youth have technology and all of these conviences doesn't fully make their life better...bullying happens now on the net too, and because playgounds and outdoor activities have lessened they have to deal with obesity. More factory produced foods, chemicals and overall harmful agents in the enviroment that may effect their health later on. Not to mention the current state of the US.
Each generation as they age will have stories of "When I was a child..."

[edit on 20-3-2010 by dreamingawake]

Originally posted by Silver Shadow
Crito has a point.

The good times may be over for quite a while.

When the financial collapse really hits, martial law, rationing, unemployment, urban warfare.......

We might be telling our kids or grandkids, when I was young I had my own car, and I could drive it EVERY DAY anytime I wanted, anywhere I wanted.

They will stare at you in wide eyed wonder...................

You might tell them you ate 3 times a day, and could buy take away food whenever you wanted - and you never carried a gun - anywhere.

I don't think they would beleive the car story.

I remember when I was a kid except for my younger brother who was about the same age at me, I would try to avoid getting in fights. That was our just our way to settle disputes. Apparently he was always wrong.

When school bullies picked on me which they eventually got around to or they wouldn't be school bullies, I would put up with it for a little while, then I would wait until I was farther away from any school officials. The next time they tried something and I had enough, I would smack em up. I never worried about the police being called or in one case I didn't worry about the bus driver reporting me. I once had 10 kids gang up on me. None of us had weapons. I beat the crap out of the first 2 or 3 that were trying to jump or kick at me. An ambulance took them away. Another 3 or 4 I just hit pretty hard as they were coming at me. They managed to get me pretty angry which was bad for them. The other 4 or 5 kids ran away too fast for me to get to them. I never once worried about the police being called. They started it and I was defending myself. At that time, the police were never called to any fight. Fathers would even tell their sons to beat the crap out of someone if they were pestering you and not to put up with any bully.

Alcohol laws were pretty lax when it came to enforcement. I believe my own mother used to give me a shot of liquor when I had a bad cold to help my throat. I don't even know if I was a teenager yet when that started. Of course it was just a shot, not something I would get to drink when I didn't have a bad cold. However I do remember visiting the St. Louis zoo one time. I was only about 15 or 16. I got thirsty and told my parents I was going to look for a water fountain or something to drink. I could not find any. Finally I saw a line where they were giving away drinks. They were in big red plastic cups. I thought, I wonder why there is foam on top. Oh well, I'm thirsty. I got in line and got one. Met back up with the rest of the family and wondered why it felt warmer outside. Then my older brother told me I drank a beer. No big deal.

In college there used to be over 20 bars surrounding the college campus. During orientation day, someone told us that over half the drunk driving arrests in the entire state were within the 26 miles of campus roads. I remember going to free movies on campus (nothing fancy, just some old stuff and some cartoons). Before the movie started on more than one occasion, we did some waves in the theatre. One side stood up and said "less filling", the other side stood up and said "tastes great".

We never heard terms like politically correct. I remember one free campus movie was something called Deathrace 2000. It was a race and you got extra points for running over certain types of people. I think you got an extra 100 points or something big for running over a baby. A couple with a small kid got up out of the movie and left after one point. It was definitely not politically correct. The movie had some humour. I think someone planted a fake baby that had a bomb in it. Maybe I don't remember it clearly anymore. We had some violent movies back then.

Then about a year or two into college, someone changed the drinking laws and made it illegal for me to drink for a whole year. That wasn't a problem though. The law wasn't enforced.

When I was younger we did not have any computers. We played outside and played card and board games. The tv only had about 6 to 12 stations on it and most of that wasn't any good. I also used to read books. I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy. I do miss that. I read some really good books that took many hours to finish. The experience was better than any movie. I just don't seem to have the time to do that anymore. Now I see movie producers in the last 10 years are making movies based on the fiction I used to read as a kid. There are some good stories out there that have not been made into any movie yet. I think a series of movies based on L Ron Hubbard Mission to Earth books would seem entertaining to many now. I believe there were 10 novels to that series and I read them all. You wouldn't believe how much extra time you have without computers, cell phones, etc. etc.

Just remembered when I was in elementary school, if you got out of line, they would take you out and smack the crap out of you on your bottom with a big wooden paddle. That was before you got home and got even worse treatment because the school would definitely notify your parents. I read many years later that they did away with that kind of punishment due to some schools reporting some kids had broken bones as a result of the punishment.

I got my first pc a few years after I got my first full time job after college. I used it mainly for playing games. There were no social networking sites. I didn't even have the internet until several years later. I used a dial up modem and without any video loading, you would wait and wait up to a minute or two for a screen full of text to load up.

Just think in 10 to 20 years, all of you will be able to talk about having to wait for tiny little low def videos to load up. I hope full screen high def movies will be loading almost instantaneous by then.

[edit on 20-3-2010 by orionthehunter]