The spoiled under 30 crowd

...............did I just read an eye chart?........................

 

i think so .........

 

I'm only 32 and when I was a kid we had a black and white TV upstairs and a small color one downstairs. We lived in the sticks and even with a huge antennae strapped to the top of a tree, we got 3 stations: PBS, ABC, and NBC. The phone was made of hard plastic and you could've killed someone with the receiver.

I wrote my papers on an electric typewriter that sounded like a machine gun. We got a VCR when I was 7. It was huge and had knobs instead of buttons. I think it cost $1,000 in 1980's dollars. Our microwave looked like it was a commercial duty machine. All chrome plated and it must've weighed 100 pounds. It lasted forever but probably irradiated all of us.

But... Getting back to the core topic, I kind of think people under 40 in general have it worse than their parents and the trend is getting worse. When your parents were young, they could buy a house, 2 cars, and live pretty decently on a middle class salary. Now, not so much. Schools across the board were pretty good. Public schools were places you went to get a good education. Now with budget cuts and so on, not so much. When your parents got jobs, they could stay at that same job for decades and usually have a pension plan. Now you're lucky if you're with a company for 2 years max.

It used to be that the older generation would make it easier on the younger one. Now I think the opposite is true.

 

We are very lucky.
Internet, media and communications technology have made our world very small.
Plus we have a plethora of STDs I don't you guys had to worry about back in the day. Until that guy had sex with a monkey...

 

I can soooo relate to this ....

I was also the remote for 'getting a drink', 'answer the phone', 'take out the trash', yadda yadda yadda....

 

I also want to thank you for your service. My youngest is currently serving in Afghanistan.

Now, get the hell off my lawn!

 

Remeber when you had pay a dime to use the pulbic toilet? At least they were clean back then. Now forget it.

As with all advances in technology, certain things die off. Just the way it is. Do I think the children of today have it easier? Depends. They have more electronic stuff yes, but cetain skills they will never posses. Sense of direction? Show me someone who came of age in the GPS era that can "find" there way if they become lost. We learned how to save from our parents that had parents that were from the Great Depression. We leanred family values as the family was still strong. Today, with both parents (or a single parent) working the kids get left out. We have a different set of skills that our children will not acquire as thier envionernment has changed significantly. However, they will have skills that we will have a hard time grasping as we didn't come of age during this time. Can your parents use Twitter? navigate the interenet like you? Mine can't.

The problem is, there might not be a America as you and I know it for these young people. My son (who is two) will be paying for our current dept when he grows up. College? I have been saving since day 1 in multiple accounts for that kind of money. Public college cost avg? ~$7.5k. Private? ~$27k. That is right now. How will it be in 16 years? You and I could get by w/o a college degree because there were jobs out there that paid well w/o one. Now, forget it. Manufacturing? HA!

People coming out of college now are riddled in debt and there are no jobs. Well, there are but all those kids in finance and business are in tough shape. Those jobs are never coming back.

So I say they don't really have it easier. I would grow up during the 80's 6 days a week and twice on Sunday before I would want to grow up now. My part now is too make sure I pass on mine and my wife's values to our son. I think today, that is forgotten in our fast pace lives. Never forget where you came from rings out louder now than it ever has before. I would be shocked to see some sort of revolution in my son's lifetime. The great Roman civilization came crashing down. Why not the great American civilization? Too big of a gap between the have's and the have nots. Too much greed and too many back door deals. Sunk the Romans, and it will sink us.

 

Electric typewriter? I remember doing papers with a manual one - with the round buttons that you had to smack good and the ribbons you had to move around to get the best ink coverage.

I see things a little differently...... When I was a kid, we had a house & one car. My Dad was the sole income and I have no idea what he made (Electric Engineer). Dad was always tight .... we drank a lot of Kool-Aid, powdered milk, and wore cheap clothes. I had my first set of Levi's when I was in 6th grade. The kids were brutal back then...I always got picked on because I didn't 'have things' like the other kids did. My Dad was Frugal....

Today? There's WAY too many handouts. People are lazy and don't want to work. They spend foolishly and max out credit cards. It's no big deal to file for bankrupcy. I work with a guy (he's about 32) and he's filed backrupcy TWICE!!!! People on welfare..... food stamps..... all sorts of programs.
Too many teenage pregnancies and single moms/dads who can't work to take care of the children.

Nobody takes things seriously anymore. Marriage isn't *till death do us part* but it's more like *Until I dont' want to deal with you anymore*

Where's the morals ? Whatever happened to 'not having sex' until you were married - kinda thing?

 

Here's another thing: I feel that kids today are sedentary. When I was a kid I was allowed to watch 2 hours of Saturday morning cartoons. Then I was told to go chop firewood, mow the grass ( 14 acres of it), help dad with the rototiller, or some sort of hard physical labor. At the time I hated it. Now I love it and am glad Dad made me do all those things. Seems that today all kids do is sit on their asses and as a result 80% of them are fat.

 

THATS RIGHT
That is the way it was in my neighborhood.
You back talked another parent or adult family member and you were instantly put in your place. Then that adult would tell your parents and it was set for round two of an ass whoopin.

 

someone say steak

 

It seems to be a regional thing too. When I go visit my folks in TN, when I transfer from one plane to the small jet that goes to my hometown, I wonder how in the hell the planes going to get off the ground because EVERYBODY on the plane is fat as hell. I'm usually the only skinny guy on it.

Then you get off and drive around and every other resturaunt is one of those burger/applebee type joints. Food is too easily available and its often cheap enough to eat large quantities of it.

 

I think you "over thirty" people have it easy...you dont have to listen to old geazers like you, asking how to use all this great technology all the time. hahaha jk

 

haha so very true.... those were the days my friend...

I did got beat up by my parents
I did play Atari 2600
I did wrote a bunch of letters to out of state friends
I didnt had a computer until '92 and all it had was DOS, IIRC

And he list could go on...

 

No kiddin'. My Mother in law seriously doesn't know how to use a PC. Talk about annoying. We didn't have a PC until I was 16-17 and I was able to figure it out.

 

Yeah and seems nowadays that people who cant use a cell phone or a computer are the today's "illiterate people", forget about people that cant read or write...