Spoiled and Under 30?

OK -- I was just sent this email (H/T to our friend Heather). I just did a quick Google search on it, and (as far as I can tell) its been floating around since May. So you've probably already seen it. But indulge me... I quote unknown source...

THE SPOILED UNDER-30 CROWD!

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 .. 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 rubbish like that on 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 thirty, 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 don't know how good you've got it! 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!

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!

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

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! 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 school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know! You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!

We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like "Space Invaders" and "Asteroids", and the graphics sucked! Your 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!

When you went to the movie theater there was no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just screwed! Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels, and there was no onscreen menu and no remote control! 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 backside and walk over to the TV to change the channel, and 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 brats!

And we didn't have microwaves; if we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a frigging fire ... imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing and shake it over the stove forever like an idiot.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy.

You're spoiled! You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,

The over 30 Crowd.

So -

• Are you over thirty? Which parts are true? What resonates?
• Are you under thirty? Did you ever own your own Record Player?

(Pic is me before we owned a color TV).