Kids today don't know how good they have it !

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Growing up without a cell phone



If you are 30, or older, you might think this is hilarious!

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 itand 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 darn 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 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 butts! 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 mess 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 cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn't make a 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 butt 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 brats!

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!

If I got stuck somewhere I put my thumb out and more then once with my shot gun waring my orange vest with rabbits or squirrels in the packet. Did not have to worry about the cops arresting me.

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!
 
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And in 1963 I had to buy my own car!! '55 Studebaker Commander for $125.00:eek: Dang....wish I still had that thing. Ran like a scalded dog.....120 MPH on bias ply tires and an old blacktop hiway. Didn't even have FM radio yet, only AM. And LP 33 1/3rd or 45 records. Wouldn't trade the experience for anything.:thumb:
 
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Putting on 2 or 3 jackets and "borrowing" a couple welding helmets so you could have BB gun fights in the orange groves up the street; that's entertainment. Ah, the things we did and lived to tell (because our parents didn't catch us).
 
Putting on 2 or 3 jackets and "borrowing" a couple welding helmets so you could have BB gun fights in the orange groves up the street; that's entertainment. Ah, the things we did and lived to tell (because our parents didn't catch us).

I thought they knew, but my parents, or at least my mom, just found out we did the same thing when I told her about a month ago...Can't believe we thought that was a good idea. :doh:
 
I was a kid through the fifties. I wouldn't trade my childhood years with any kid today. I had a great time, lived in the country, worked hard, played hard. My grandkids have all the latest and greatest of today's stuff, but I wouldn't trade them for all the hunting, fishing, and exploring I got to do. For Christmas when I was 10 I got a 22 rifle for Christmas. Life was good.
 
Not getting anything off your chest, are you Dave? :rofl::rofl:

I completely agree with you. Growing up in the 50-60's was a blast. Kids may be able to "text" better than us, but I wouldn't trade it for driving go-karts, motorcycles, bicycles and just general not trying to get yourself killed via stupidity on a daily basis.

Heck I dug many a deep dungeon in our backyard (literally 8 feet deep by 6 by 6 with part of it with a 4 ft roof (talk about potential cave in). In today's world, my parents would have been arrested for child endangerment.
 
Putting on 2 or 3 jackets and "borrowing" a couple welding helmets so you could have BB gun fights in the orange groves up the street; that's entertainment. Ah, the things we did and lived to tell (because our parents didn't catch us).

you must be alot younger, we used home made bows and arrows till one kid got his eye cut.. then it wasnt allowed:) but it was fun to see them sick in the hay mow next to you or the bad guys:) and chickens, wow live targets:)
 
Usta build forts out of tumble weeds in the Orange groves and have orange fights. Well I grew up in Southern Cal and we didn't snow so we could have snow ball fights. The fun thing to do was put firecrackers inside the orange and try to time the fuse so when it went off it was above your enemy's fort...:D
 
Putting on 2 or 3 jackets and "borrowing" a couple welding helmets so you could have BB gun fights in the orange groves up the street; that's entertainment. Ah, the things we did and lived to tell (because our parents didn't catch us).

Hmm...I guess putting some protection on would have been a good idea. Live and learn I guess. My cousin sets off the metal detector at the court house every jury duty. :rofl:
 
I used to get away with all kinds of stuff. Teachers and Girl Scout leaders always gave me a a free pass because they couldn't believe I could have been involved (as we were all lined up against the wall). So two out of the three got in trouble and I was always dismissed. Little did they know :rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
Piece of corn on a small bluegill hook. Toss it into a chicken coop. You will soon have the catch of your life.

That sounds almost as much fun as rat baseball.
You take your bat and go out in the corn crib and bash rats until your arms are to tired to swing the bat any more. :thumb::thumb::thumb:
When ya got tired of that you go climb the silo and jump into the corn to see how far in you could get. As kids we where dumber than bricks. What fool would jump 15 or 20 feet into a pile of corn.
Water gun fights where for sissy's we would grab a trash can lid for a shield and have rock fights.:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
 
Heck I dug many a deep dungeon in our backyard (literally 8 feet deep by 6 by 6 with part of it with a 4 ft roof (talk about potential cave in). In today's world, my parents would have been arrested for child endangerment.
When I was about 12, the neighbor boys there was 3 of them, and did that... we got down about 8 or 9 feet, then started tunneling inward... we were going to put timbers overhead because the dirt was all sand...

you must be alot younger, we used home made bows and arrows till one kid got his eye cut.. then it wasnt allowed:) but it was fun to see them sick in the hay mow next to you or the bad guys:) and chickens, wow live targets:)

I made my bows from lengths of yaupon and for arrows, we had a weed that grew tall and straight... I raided my dad's nail bin, but the head of the nails, sharpened it and then wired or wrapped it on the end of the arrow... worked well, but sometimes the force of the bow would cause the "arrow" to shatter, but most of the time leave the nail stuck in your target.


Another friend had a creek running through their property... we dumped some logs in a narrow spot to form a kind of dam to create a skinny dipping pool... until we discovered that the water moccasins also like to skinny dip...:eek::rofl:
 
Well i a glad to say you guys made by day making me relive all those experiences.

I agree i would not swap texting for what i lived through.

Bows and arrows......too many cowboy movies.

Forts in tree houses.....

Digging tunnels Sharon i dont know why but we had this obsession too must have been Steve McQueens fault with the great escape...too many war movies.

Shooting each other with pelet guns not BB Glenn and no protection. How dumb could we be. We piled up some potatoe sacks filled with saw dust and lay behind them and aimed for the other guy. Still have not worked out how we did not get injured.

Did you ever go to work on your pelet gun and "soup it up"with the addition of a valve tappet spring. That was so dangerous for a bunch of a or 9 year olds to be doing. Aim was to get the pelet to go through a galvanised steel garbage bin. And that was before they were made as thin as a jam tin. We figured you needed it to be this strong to down a rock dove on the mine dump.:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Just imagine a marine stopping in at the gunsmith and saying can you soup up my rifle i need to shoot the guy behind the wall.:rofl::rofl:



Ok what about clay. We used to go down to the mine dumps. Find a place where two opposing dumps were reasonably close to each other, then get some clay that was about and take a branch of black wattle "weed" and you put a lump of clay on the end and flick it at the other side.

So girls and boys participated on each side of the dump. It beat tennis ball stingers. You came home with such bruzes where it got you on the eye, legs stomach whereever. Boy that was painful. First ones to chicken out were the loosers.

What about what i have just discovered you guys call flying termites. We called them flying ants. They would come out in their millions in the evening i think after some rain or something. Very specific circumstances.

We would grab a tennis racket and go to town swatting them to pieces. Boy we had a cruel streek in us. Pull the wings off too.

How about making kites from Bamboo and newspaper and flour and water glue with moms spare matrial scraps for a tail and a fishing rod with reel and gut for a line. Sending messages up to the kite before it hit the powerlines and that was the end of that.:rofl:

Chuck E there was no raiding dads nail bin with us. We were all recyclers. Dont you remember straightening bent rusted nails to make soap box cars where the axle was held on a piece of wood by bent over nails.
 
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