LadyFish
Admiral
- Joined
- Mar 18, 2003
- Messages
- 6,894
From a Washington Post article, in which readers were asked to tell Gen-Xers how much harder *they* had it in the old days:<br /><br />Second Runner-Up: In my day, we couldnt afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In the winter we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction.<br /><br />First Runner-Up: In my day we didnt have MTV or in-line skates, or any of that stuff. No, it was 45s and regular old metal-wheeled roller skates, and the 45s always skipped, so to get them to play right youd weigh the needle down with something like quarters, which we never had because our allowances were too small, so wed use our skate keys instead and end up forgetting they were taped to the record player arm so that we couldnt adjust our skates, which didnt really matter because those crummy metal wheels would kill you if you hit a pebble anyway, and in those days roads had real pebbles on them, not like today.<br /><br />And the winner of the velour bicentennial poster: In my day, we didnt have no rocks. We had to go down to the creek and wash our clothes by beating them with our heads.<br /><br />Honorable Mentions:<br /><br />In my day, we didnt have dogs or cats. All I had was Silver Beauty, my beloved paper clip.<br /><br />Back in the 1970s we didnt have the space shuttle to get all excited about. We had to settle for men walking on the crummy moon.<br /><br />In my day, we didnt have days. There was only time for work, time for prayer and time for sleep. The sheriff would go around and tell everyone when to change.<br /><br />In my day, people could only dream of hitchhiking a ride on a comet.<br /><br />In my day, we didnt have fancy health-food restaurants. Every day we ate lots of easily recognizable animal parts, along with potatoes drenched in melted fat from those animals. And were all as strong as<br />GKK-GAAK<br />Urrgh.<br />Thud.<br /><br />In my day, we didnt have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated.<br /><br />In my day, we didnt get that disembodied, slightly ticked-off voice saying Doors closing. We got on the train, the doors closed, and if your hand was sticking out it scraped along the tunnel all the way to the Silver Spring station and it was a bloody stump at the end. But the base fare was only a dollar.<br /><br />In my day, we didnt have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms.<br /><br />In my day, we didnt have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did.<br /><br />Kids today think the world revolves around them. In my day, the sun revolved around the world, and the world was perched on the back of a giant tortoise.<br /><br />In my day, we wore our pants up around our armpits. Monstrous wedgies, but we looked snappy.<br /><br />In my day, we didnt have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him. 
