Over 30?

lorweld

I received this in an e-mail and thought it was funny! I hope it hasn't been posted before!

If you are 30 or older you will think
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>this is hilarious!!!!
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>When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with
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>their tedious diatribes about how hard things were
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>when they were growing up; what with walking
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>Twenty-five miles to school every morning ... uphill
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>BOTH ways .. yadda, yadda, yadda
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>And I remember promising myself
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>that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going
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>to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how
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>hard I had it and how easy they've got it!
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>
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>But now that...
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>I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look
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>around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy!
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>I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!
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>And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know
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>how good you've got
>it!
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>I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have The Internet.
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>If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the
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>damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card
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>catalog!!
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>There was no email! ! We had to actually write somebody
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>a letter ... with a pen! Then you had to walk all the
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>way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it
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>would take like a week to get there!
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>There were no MP3's or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you
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>had to hitchhike to the damn record store
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>and shoplift it yourself!
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>Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and
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>the DJ'd usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up!
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>We didn't have fancy crap like Call Waiting! If you were on the
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>phone and somebody else called
>they got a busy signal, that's it!
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>And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either! When
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>the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could
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>be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your
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>drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't
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>know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
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>We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games
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>with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the
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>Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and
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>"asteroids" and the graphics sucked ass! Your guy was
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>a little square! You actually had to use your
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>imagination! And there were no multiple
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>levels or screens, it was just one screen forever!
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>And you could never win. The game just kept getting
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>harder and harder and faster and faster until you
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>died! . Just like LIFE!
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>When
>you went to the movie theater there no such thing
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>as stadium seating! All the seats were the same
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>height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat
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>sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were
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>just screwed!
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>Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was
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>only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu
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>and no remote control! (remember ON & SelecTV?)
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> You had to use a little book
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>called a TV Guide to find out what was on!
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>You were screwed when it came to channel surfing! You
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>had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to
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>change the channel and there was no Cartoon Network
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>either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday
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>Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to
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>wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled
>little
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>rat-bastards!
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>And we didn't have microwaves, if we wanted to heat
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>something up . we had to use the stove or go build a
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>frigging fire ...imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use
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>that stupid JiffyPop thing and shake it over the stove
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>forever like an idiot.
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>That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids
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>today have got it too easy. You're spoiled.
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>You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in
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>1970 - 1980!
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>Regards,
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>The over 30 Crowd

kelle

LOL. My cousin couldn't believe me that when I started dating any guy, I had to ring them on their home phone and have a conversation with their mother before they got to the phone. Not pleasant some of the time, but it had to be done.
15 channels?? You must be joking, it was BBC1&2, RTE1&2, UTV and after November 1982 Channel 4.
Also it cost a week's wages to buy one outfit in Penney's or Dunnes. The only reason I had more clothes than some of my friends was because I could sew and knit.

Latchy

It's all true and i was only saying this the other day to another over 30's .Imagine back in 70's/ 80's being able to arrange your teen life on pc /mobile with email ,text ,facebook bebo etc ? We were lucky if we had home phone and video ,now it's multi channel everything and pizza deliverys

Us over 30's missed out big time .You lucky younger people you

kelle

It makes me wonder : what will the teenagers of today be telling teenagers of 20 years time? What further advances in technology will there be?
One thing I'm thinking about is that the whereabouts of children and teenagers would be very easily tracked, maybe by their DNA recorded from birth - it might be said that "once upon a time when a child went missing they could be missing forever, now they can be found within minutes". And public disorder might be non-existent as nobody's going to take part in it if they can be tracked and their activities recorded!
Or maybe I'm living in a Utopia!

il gatto

Unless they invent teleporters, it can't get much better. Just think. Imagine if you were 14 nowadays. You can ring anyone, anytime, anywhere. You can take photos on your phone and e-mail them to your friend in Australia. Any information you want is available on the internet. Any information. Games look like movies. Your parents drive you everywhere. You don't leave messages with your friends mother in the vain hope she remembers to tell him. You can record video. On your friggin phone! Watches have altimeters. Cars have sat-nav. And DVD players. Young people actually have cars. What's that about?:eek:
And when your in your late teens you can f@#k off to Spain or Greece on holidays. And when you're 20, go to Australia for a year.
The average 30 year old has very little in common with the average 20 year old. Has a single decade ever shown such a huge difference in lifestyle? Not attitudes like the sixties, but how people live. Apart from the generations who lived in the wars.
I'm not saying life was rough growing up. It wasn't. But I really don't think your average teenager would survive the Ireland I grew up in. And it wasn't so bad imo:pac:

Jesus Wept

I forgot about the old non stadium seating in Cinemas, it was a nightmare!

gipi

Never mind the non-stadium seating, I remember when smoking was permitted in cinemas - it wasn't the large hair-do or tall bloke that blocked the screen, it was the fug!

Made films like "The Fog" very realistic though

kelle

il gatto wrote: »

Your parents drive you everywhere.

In the 80's I didn't ask Mum or Dad to drive me anywhere - the car was only used for very essential travel. I did work experience in a place 10 miles from home and I had to cycle there and back every day - it rained a few of the days but I still got no lift.
Now I have a teenager looking after my two older children for the Summer, he lives 6 miles away and we have to collect him every morning and bring him to the house, then leave him back home in the eveningtime. It's a pain in the ar*e, but I suppose the roads are more dangerous now than they were 20 years ago.

By the way, Il gatto, what's a teleporter (I take it you're not referring to the mini-digger type machine!)

il gatto

kelle wrote: »

In the 80's I didn't ask Mum or Dad to drive me anywhere - the car was only used for very essential travel. I did work experience in a place 10 miles from home and I had to cycle there and back every day - it rained a few of the days but I still got no lift.
Now I have a teenager looking after my two older children for the Summer, he lives 6 miles away and we have to collect him every morning and bring him to the house, then leave him back home in the eveningtime. It's a pain in the ar*e, but I suppose the roads are more dangerous now than they were 20 years ago.

By the way, Il gatto, what's a teleporter (I take it you're not referring to the mini-digger type machine!)

Something more along these lines:D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_teleporter

Mini-digger? What have you been smoking? A digger, only small. It'll never happen:D

kelle

il gatto wrote: »

Mini-digger? A digger, only small. It'll never happen:D

Well, they look like mini diggers!

il gatto wrote: »

What have you been smoking?

Smoking, that's another thing - I couldn't have afforded to smoke as a teenager if I had wanted to, so why are some of my much younger cousins and their friends able to smoke 20 a day despite the extortionate price of cigarettes? Oh, I'm beginning to sound like my father....


Though, on the other hand, my childminder is 17 and has NO interest in the internet whatsoever, except to download music for his MP3 - and he only does that about once a month! He must be the only one!

TheDriver

we only got a VCR in 1993 and had 2 channels until TG4 and TV3 eventually started!
Remember TV actually ending at night with the national anthem and no cartoons until 2pm so if you were off sick from school, it was a boring day!

gipi

I remember renting our first VCR (yep, renting, not buying!), back in the early 80s. It was a Ferguson model, sat on top of the TV and had a "remote" control....connected to the VCR by cable!

The rental cost £25 per month (about €32 in new money!)!

Harpy

im only 21 but i do remember some of the things mentioned
i moved into a house in cork last year, and it had one of those tvs with the buttons on it it was so cute but it did get quickly replaced by a tv with remote..
i remember when i was younger having a non remote tv and having to stick matches into the button for the channel you wanted to watch...

Irjudge1

kelle wrote: »

Well, they look like mini diggers!

Smoking, that's another thing - I couldn't have afforded to smoke as a teenager if I had wanted to, so why are some of my much younger cousins and their friends able to smoke 20 a day despite the extortionate price of cigarettes? Oh, I'm beginning to sound like my father....

Ah but you used to be able to buy singles usually in any shop within walking distance of a secondary school. Fair play, shopkeepers knew that poor 13 year olds wouldn't be able to buy 20 unless they "bunched".

drunkmonkey

I had to laugh last night, Met a young fell in the Jacks and he was giving out about button fly jeans....I had to point out that he was lucky and didn't know how good he had it, It was all zip flys in my day....

TheDriver

drunkmonkey wrote: »

I had to laugh last night, Met a young fell in the Jacks and he was giving out about button fly jeans....I had to point out that he was lucky and didn't know how good he had it, It was all zip flys in my day....

There is something very dodgy about that! Couldn't you talk about anything else other than about flys in the jacks?????

Pigman II

The-Rigger wrote: »

I forgot about the old non stadium seating in Cinemas, it was a nightmare!

Agreed. Why I can't even watch a movie in the cinemas these days unless it's from the comfort of a coporate box. Best to stay clear of the riff-raff.

Stadium seating forever!

Darwin

Harpy wrote: »

im only 21 but i do remember some of the things mentioned
i moved into a house in cork last year, and it had one of those tvs with the buttons on it it was so cute but it did get quickly replaced by a tv with remote..
i remember when i was younger having a non remote tv and having to stick matches into the button for the channel you wanted to watch...

Pah! We had a B&W valve TV set until 1982...took about 5 minutes for the set to warm up and the picture to appear but the sound worked straight away. After this we started to rent a colour TV (good 'ol days of recession) - the first thing I saw was level 42 playing in full colour - couldn't believe it!

transylman

Irjudge1 wrote: »

Ah but you used to be able to buy singles usually in any shop within walking distance of a secondary school. Fair play, shopkeepers knew that poor 13 year olds wouldn't be able to buy 20 unless they "bunched".

Didn't know you could buy single cigarettes. Sounds a lot like this d'unbelieveables sketch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwVpWFyy3M

Irjudge1

transylman wrote: »

Didn't know you could buy single cigarettes. Sounds a lot like this d'unbelieveables sketch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEwVpWFyy3M

I was that soldier, presumably that's why shops introduced the 10p bag.