KIDS TODAY
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-six, 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! And I hate to say it but you kids
today, you don't know how good you've got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we
didn't have The Internet -- we wanted to know something, we had to go to the
goddamned 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 goddamned 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 jackoff
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 were no such things as stadium seating! All the seats were the
same height! A tall guy sat in front of you, you were screwed! 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 1984!