If you are 40 or older, you might think this is hilarious!

Skate Keys

Roller skates came in one size. They were all metal, except for a leather ankle strap. Needed a special key, or find a wrench, to adjust the length of the skate and adjust the two pieces on the front to clamp your feet in tight.. And sidewalks always seemed to have cracks or different levels and it was very easy to fall. I was terrible at skating. My oldest sister had that stuff down great! She would skate across broken concrete and make it look easy. I usually fell on my face. lol

After a rain I rushed outside to run down the block to enjoy the water running down the street gutter and used sticks and stones to make dams and direct the water out into the street.

At the age of 6 we moved out into the country. Woods woods and more woods! And streams and creeks. I would spend an entire Saturday building dams in the streams in late winter and early spring, when the water was rushing, and divert the water in other directions.

Almost every boy had a pocket knife on him at all times. And we didn't get suspended from school. In fact, many desk tops in classrooms had somebody's name carved into the top.

I got my first rifle when I was 10 years old. It was a .22 caliber remington. On windy days I would collect the sour apples that fell from that huge apple tree in our yard and throw them into the lake behind our house. And I would have lots and lots of bobbing targets. I never shot at anybody. I never shot out windows and I never pointed it at anyone. Why? Because when I was about 7 years old, my cousin and I were playing cowboys and indians and I pointed a cap pistol at him. My grandfather saw that and beat the snot out of me. lol

I could walk the mile down to the general store, picking up empty pop bottles and turn them in and get enough money for candy and pop and chips. Then take the empty pop bottle back in the store and get candy for that one bottle.

Great times!!

You think it was bad to have just 5-6 channels and cartoons only on saturdays? Well, I'm from south Sweden and slightly over 50. We only had one black and white channel (technically 2 as we could tune in the one only danish channel as well) and cartoons every... uhhh... like every christmas or something. Ok, I have to admit I remember Flintstones was pretty popular back then so some shows must have been on more regularly than that but they were few. In the 70's most animated childrens stuff was from behind the iron-curtain and with the exception of the yugoslavian cartoon Professor Balthazar they all bored you to tears.

In 1969 we got a second stately financed tv-channel so for the next 18 years we had actually 3 tv-channels, counting the danish one too. So around 1987 we got cable and satellite-tv which for the first time introduced to us commercial channels. So up to that I had never experienced those annoying commercial breaks within shows and between shows. Something I'm kinda immensively grateful for because I really hate that shyte! Another upside of growing up with tv during that time, was that they actually made good and foremost intelligent programmes as well. There was often interesting documentaries and quiz-shows that wasn't all stupid but you could also learn something from them. There was no such thing as reality shows back then. They didn't appear until the mid-90's.

We didn't have commercial radio back then. We had three swedish and three danish channels. The first was always for talk-radio, the second mostly for classical music and jazz and the third for popular music. All the popular artists were released here. We were not behind the iron-curtain after all and i'm very grateful for that. So I have grown up with the same artists as most of you plus the local swedish and danish ones. My parents gave me five kroner a day, so when I was in my teens I could save for a week and buy an LP.

Once I had learned to read, one thing I learned to appreciate was comic books. Since we're a small country we didn't have as many of them as in US but it didn't matter. I enjoyed those we had and they were more back then than they have today. Today only a few comic books are released and they all suck. I guess that games, gadgets and tech-stuff has killed that market. But I enjoyed the swedish editions of Superman, Batman, Spiderman and many more. I think it is sad. Seems like todays children has forgot to read because of all gadgets and games.

When I was a kid, games meant board-games or card-games, nothing else. First time I played Pong must have been like 76-77 on the ferry to Copenhagen. No way you owned games like that back then. It was arcades only. My first machine was made by a swedish company named Luxor and actually had cartridges although it was as early as 78-79 but the graphics were as simple as Pong though. Early 80's those pre-Game Boy games came out, like Donkey Kong and such but it was just one game and the same screen all along.

Another thing I remember from my childhood was a game we called jumping and could only be practiced during winter as it was about jumping from one ice-chunk to another. Anyone else remember that? I guess today that would be deemed as highly dangerous, which probably sometimes was but children seldom listen to grown-ups anyway. I actually slipped a couple of times and fell in. luckily in shallow waters but it wasn't too amusing to wander all the way home soaking wet up to my chest in the middle of winter. But the most important thing to remember, we played on our own. We took initiatives. Sometimes we were bored to tears but in hind-sight I think that was a good thing because todays kids crave constant attention and entertainment. And we have seen what that leads to. When the power goes out, they get paralyzed not knowing what to do.

One strange thing I remember from the 60's was popcorn with flavors of fruit and berries, like lemon and strawberries. You might wonder why we don't have these today. Don't! I've always wondered who the brainiac behind that smart idea was.

I`d give up the technology to have those days back. It wasn`t really that bad at the time.

Yesterday I was putting the living room back together after Christmas. I decided to clean the entertainment center. I pulled EVERYTHING off of it and dusted completely. I moved a few things around and had to re-run all the wires. As I was standing behind the entertainment center and hooking up all the games, stereo equipment, satellite and tv I started thinking how our grandparents were happy to have just a tv that was black and white. If we lived like they did we'd have a hellofa lot more money in the bank and a lot less crap. I do enjoy all of that crap though. I am over 40 but we are spoiled as well. Oh yeah, while I was rewiring everything I was listening to my i-pod.

Originally posted by MJZoo
I'm only 32 but quite a few of those ring true.

Thanks for the laughs.

Hell, i'm 33 and...well i'm right there with you buddy!
My uncle, whose 40, had the Atari 2600 and I couldnt play it! and if i threw a Beeotch fit, He roughed me up! "complain like a girl, boy?! HEADLOCK you softee! WWF Diamond Cutter!!! Figure 4 Leg Lock! now get outta my room..."


and who remembers this?! I loved this during the early 80's...the late 60's babies may recall this too, if they had tv's.

And videos. If we wanted to watch something we'd have to wait 6 months for it to be released on video and then we'd have to rent it. No bloody uTorrent!

And porn. If we wanted to look at some we had to get our hands on Playboy somehow. Now you have all the porn you could ever want at the click of a mouse!

reply to post by OUTofSTEPwithTHEworld
FLAT TOP!
Oh man, did I hate the flat top. Long hair was in style, and my father and I went to the barber shop every Saturday morning to keep our hair out of style. And that stick of butch wax in the medicine cabinet, the brand we used had a yellow with brown pinstripes paper wrapper.

Love #3

3) 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!


That was so true.

I was spanked more times than I can count by the neighbors, and you just prayed that they did mention it to your parents, cause your parents would spank you again for the very same thing.

You knew never to let it slip that you got “licks” at school, if you did Dad’s belt was the first sound you heard.

I loved that. I'm 35 and now I'm relating most of this to my 5 year old son!! Oh how I miss the 80's!!!!!!

reply to post by jude11


Ok that is funny, an im not even 40 yet lmao

Originally posted by jude11
So my friend sends me an email and this is what she had to say

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 forty, 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!

1) 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!!

2) 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!

3) 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!

4) There were no MP3's or Napsters or iTunes! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!

5) 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 then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that's how we rolled, Baby! Dig?

6) 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!

7) There weren't any freakin' cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your "friends". OH MY GOSH !!! Think of the horror... not being in touch with someone 24/7!!! And then there's TEXTING. Yeah, right. Please! You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

8) 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 parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent... you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

9) We didn't have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids'. Your screen 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!

10) 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!!! Oh, no, what's the world coming to?!?!

11) 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!

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

13) And our parents told us to stay outside and play... all day long. Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort. And if you came back inside... you were doing chores!

And car seats - oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on. If you were lucky, you got the "safety arm" across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well that was your fault for calling "shot gun" in the first place!

See! That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled rotten! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or any time before!

Regards,
The Over 40 Crowd

ROFLMAO.. this is some funny stuff.. alot of it I must admit is true.

Young people today – they walk around in their droopy-assed slacks, ridiculous foot wear and exposed underpants looking like a cross between a circus clown and a 10 cent prostitute, muffin tops and belly shirts and exposed thongs and low rider pants. What the hell is with young people having words like “Angel” written across the ass of their sweat pants? Nothing like false advertising! At this rate it won’t be long before we’re nothing but a planet of heavily pierced Neanderthals incapable of forming sentences and communicating with a series of snorts, heavy sighs and rude hand gestures. But these young people today – they drive like drunken fruit bats. Speeding down the road while talking on the phone, sending text messages and checking their god damned hair in the rearview, it’s vain and dangerous. They don’t know how to write. Come on now. How the hard is it to type out the words “by the way”? It’s 8 letters for Christ’s sake. But no, it has to be “btw”, LOL, ROTFLMAO?
These kids are already dangerously low on the brain cell count and they god damned can’t afford to be frying the few they have left. They’re glassy-eyed, bong-toting dope fiends. They’re hopped up on crystal meth, topped up on '___', puffing on the marijuana and acting like a bunch of marauding half-wits at a village idiot convention. They say they need to take drugs in order to “escape.” Escape from what? Their playstations, six figure allowances and designer underpants?
All they do is play the damned video games. Night and day. They’re burrowed away in their dimly lit basements, rotting their brains, ruining their eyesight and developing skin tones normally reserved for corpses and naked mole rats. They may be able to throw a 50 yard pass on the “Madden Football,” and kill a man with their bare hands on the “Splinter Cell” but turn the games off and these young people would be hard pressed to pick their own noses without an instruction manual, cheat codes and parental assistance. The way I see it, the best you’ll get from playing 150 hours a week of “Halo” is eye strain, a fat ass and a case of inoperable stupidity. But in the long term, what it’s really doing is creating a generation of anti-social weirdoes, violent sociopaths, introverted nut bars, twitchy endomorphs and good old fashioned useless nerds.
Nowadays it seems that young people have to have some kind of personality disorder if they’re going to be “cool” and “hep.” It’s ridiculous. Last time I checked young people didn’t have personalities. They had bad attitudes and nerve and very little else. Seriously, what the Hell is “intermittent explosive disorder” anyway? If I had to diagnose, though, I’d have to say that young people today have a serious case of Associative Ignorant Assclown Disorder (AIAD).


crabbyoldfart.wordpress.com...

I'm not 40 yet

But, soo true.



Good one.

I am 33 and can relate to all of those things.
I remember back in those days, my first official job was channel changer.

Those defending the youth of today, this isn't a comparison of global affairs, but a comparison of comforts and pointless luxury. We've become a world of instant results, and as such things lose their value.

Ah the card catalog and dewey decimal system. I was in the advanced group so we were taken in and given the keys to all the worlds knowledge in the first grade. (kids with above 140 IQ) but the rest of the kids had to wait until the 5th grade. All of the worlds great secrets given to the few and we were gods among the mere mortals.

Then the librarian pushed out a cart full of books and said to go ahead and put em away.......

Too Funny! Maybe an EMP wouldn't be so bad after all. Maybe we could all focus on things like: Family, Morals, Integrity, Community alas.............

Originally posted by LongbottomLeaf
reply to post by schuyler

 

The tundra,f series and ram series all offer manual trans....

Not any more. The Tundra offers a six speed automatic transmission. It has a "manual mode" in 5th and 6th gear that locks up the torque converter, but that's not the same as a manual transmission with a clutch.

The only manual on a Dodge RAM is on the 3500 Chassis cab, which is not a pickup. Also, on the Dodge site there isn't a mention of a manual for the chassis cab, so the manual may be gone from that, too.

My assertion still stands: You cannot buy a manual transmission pickup in the US.

I just turned 55 myself!

Back when I was in elementary school (In Florida) We didn't even have air conditioning!

When it got too hot, the teacher would tell us to put our heads down on our desks....

reply to post by schuyler


I own a 2006 Tundra with a manual, You are right they discontinued it in 2007
The dodge still comes in 5 speed manual if you ask for it, you wont find it on the lot
ford discontinued the manual in the f series in 09
So your right on 2 but this is pretty recent, but honestly who the heck would buy a new ford anyway

My kids were not allowed to wear a helmet.

AND? I would hand them scissors and tell them go run with them.

They're fine. One missing eye and 2 broken arms but fine.


I kid I kid.

Originally posted by LongbottomLeaf
reply to post by schuyler

 

So your right on 2 but this is pretty recent, but honestly who the heck would buy a new ford anyway

I have a Duramax myself. I sold my Ranger, which was in excellent shape. The guy who bought it brought a friend with him who just couldn't stand the fact that I had gone over to the Dark Side with a Chevy. And at this point I owned both a Ford and a Chevy pickup. I said to him, "Ya know, Chevy guys call these things (pointing to my ranger) Ferds, and the fact is, Ford diesels catch plants on fire."

No accounting for taste. The big Tundras were just coming out when I got my 2007 Classic. They were great, but I just had to have a diesel, so...