When I Was Your Age....

[jedimaster91]

--I used to have computer games on 5.25" floppy disks
--I remember watching the very first episode of Barney the Dinosaur
--Kids (for the most part) still respected (and obeyed) their parents and teachers
--Cookie Monster still ate cookies
--Scraped up my knees and elbows pretty much everyday playing dodgeball at recess. Outside. On concrete
--The local park didn't have cushy recycled tires, but rather sand. And one never knew if there were used needles in there
--If you could beat the original Oregon Trail in one computer class, you were the coolest kid EVAR!
--Your cool status was also proportional to the size of your crayon box (128 crayons FTW!)
--If you didn't do your homework, you didn't get to play at recess or go on field trips. You also failed your classes and nobody complained

*Old soul in a 22 year old body*

[Jack T. Chance]

--I used to have computer games on 5.25" floppy disks
--I remember watching the very first episode of Barney the Dinosaur
--Kids (for the most part) still respected (and obeyed) their parents and teachers
--Cookie Monster still ate cookies
--Scraped up my knees and elbows pretty much everyday playing dodgeball at recess. Outside. On concrete
--The local park didn't have cushy recycled tires, but rather sand. And one never knew if there were used needles in there
--If you could beat the original Oregon Trail in one computer class, you were the coolest kid EVAR!
--Your cool status was also proportional to the size of your crayon box (128 crayons FTW!)
--If you didn't do your homework, you didn't get to play at recess or go on field trips. You also failed your classes and nobody complained

*Old soul in a 22 year old body*

Greetings, young Jedi! Long time, no see!

I'm totally jealous about that Oregon Trail bit! Back when I was in high school, during senior year, I spent any free time I had in the school computer lab, playing games on the Apple II computers they had (yes, the ancient, 1980s things with monitors that displayed one color: GREEN.) And one of the games I used to play was Oregon Trail. I never did beat that stupid game! My settlers always died!

But I memorized all the answers & questions to Jeopardy from playing it so much, so I could ALWAYS beat that game! I was the Ken Jennings of my high school!

[blas]

I came to this thread a little late.

I will say, though, I'm only 22. So, just 15 years ago, I was a youngling on my way to school. Because back THEN, if you lived more than 1 mile away from school, you couldn't take the school bus. And the school busses had BUS STOPS.

So you little brats nowadays, who get picked up at your house every morning, consider yourselves spoiled. Spoiled. The busses seem to go house to house to house on certain streets to pick kids up. That never used to happen. In fact, back then, you didn't see two or three busses going the same way. They only had certain spots to pick kids up.

And back then, the bus didn't wait for you. You were late, you missed the bus. End of story.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

The Simpsons was a horrifyingly crude television show that would bankrupt our nation's morals.

Now, it just bankrupts our nation's morals.

Two words: KIDS Incorporated.

[Slytovhand]

Computers?? Those were things only big universities had!

I remember when Space Invaders first came out.. and Star Wars (what us oldies refer to when we say Star Wars...)

Car phones as heavy as a brick, and the main transmitting part was in the boot of the car.

I remember when video tapes first came out.

Doing latin and greek word derivations in primary (elementary) school... and math without a calculator!

[crazylegs]

When I was your age

Mobile (cell) phone batteries lasted 8 hours on a full charge while just sitting there not being used!

Heat reactive t-shirts were cool.

Shell suits were considered the height of fasion

You had to have a contract for a pager

The only computer in your school was a BBC BASIC.

You had to use a screwdriver to remove the mouse if you wanted to use the joystick (we had an Apple IIc at home!).

[csquared]

Some of you are making me feel real old. It good to see a couple of people out there in my age bracket.

B/W TV with a semi-remote (my parents would yell at one of us kids)
Watching first runs of Star Trek
You rented your telephone from The Phone Company (AT&T)
Getting my parents to take me to see Star Wars.
TI-64 trumped a TI-30
Captain Zilog!

I need to find an "old-fart" smiley for when I talk about "Back in the day..."

[NorthernZel]

I need to find an "old-fart" smiley for when I talk about "Back in the day..."

Will this one do?

[Nurian]

Video game cassettes required you to press play on the VCR.
Parents were ranting because G.I. Joe and Transformers were being shown just to sell toys.
Cell phones doubled as personal security devices.
"Red Dawn" was the movie you hoped wouldn't be real, not "Idiocracy".
Commodore 64 was the most accessible computer.
Macintosh? What's that?
Volvo was synonymous with "tank".

And the bonus:

If you wanted to steal music, you still had to actually go to the store!

[Food Lady]

Does anyone remember when Cap'n Crunch had fewer berries, and they were all pink and HUGE?

[LibraryLady]

When I was your age... [cue the "Old Gray Mare"]

Television was a still a novelty. Our extended family used to go their grocery shopping on Thursday nights and bonded afterwards at my Grandparents' house while watching Wrestling matches from the Sunnyside Arena in Queens, New York. We did this because Nanny and Deetie were the only people in the family who had a TV. It didn't matter what was on. Just watching it was a treat.

We ate popcorn and ice cream as we watched Gorgeous George and Haystacks Calhoun slam each other around the ring. The experience was surreal because during the mayhem, the announcer would be saying things like, "And a Happy 50th Birthday to Mrs. Maria Sludge in Upper Cupcake New Jersey from Boo Boo, Fifi, and Guido."

If TV was a novelty, TV Dinners were an even greater one. When they first came out most families we knew didn't have a freezer that could hold more than an ice cube tray or two.

Pizza was an exotic dish sold only from the back door of a bakery on Friday nights. This made it seem a bit like contraband. Plain cheese was the only kind available.

Milk was delivered to the house in glass bottles and left on the front doorstep. Milk was not homogenized. When the weather was cold enough and the milk delivery was early enough, the cream would rise straight up and break through the foil cap on the bottle. When that happened, even good children would do a horrible thing . We'd break of the stick of cream and eat it on our way to school. The cream sticks came from houses not our own.

All electrical lines were above ground. When there was a storm we were almost certain to lose power. I can't count how many times I did my homework by the light of a kerosene lamp.

Our landlord still drove a car with a running board and the vehicle was started with a crank.

When kids say, "What? You didn't have [fill in the blank]?" I like to tell them that their question is like that of a kid coming from 2750 and asking a modern kid, "What? You don't have an oritchkedikpline?" If you don't know what it is, you don't miss it.

[Nurian]

Yup. I also remember when Boo Berry, Count Chocula and Frankenberry were all available year-round.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

When I was your age... [cue the "Old Gray Mare"]

Are your pants at least up where they're supposed to be?

[sms001]

Totally dissing your parents was pretending you didn't hear them the first time they yelled for you to come eat dinner.

Quisp cereal.

The Flintstones. Proudly brought to you by Winston Cigarettes.

Sting Ray bike with sissy bar (the taller the cooler), banana seat, and for the exceptionally cool, a stick shift shifter.

'Made In Japan' was what 'Made In China' is now.

If you were the farthest away on your block, you decided when everyone went to school - as you approached their house, they came out and joined you.

A car with electric windows was just about as futuristic as it could get.

There were still four great SF magazines. And Asimov's was still to come.

The Good Humor ice cream truck man wore a uniform.

Only really together kids had enough "spiders" (spindle adapters) to stack all their 45's. If you were careless or forgetful, you could play a few songs and then remove the records, pop out the adapters, put them in another set of 45's, and jam on.

Ordinary people knew astronaut names.

And the last "When I was your age" from me: When I was your age, people MY age used to say to me "When I was your age....."

[BookstoreEscapee]

When I Was Your Age

• "Worked in the coal mines twenty two hours a day for just half a cent"
• "Had to sell my internal organs just to pay the rent"
• "We were hungry, broken and miserable and we liked it fine that way"
• "There were seventy three of us living in a cardboard box"
• "All I got for Christmas was a lousy bag of rocks"
• "Every night for dinner, we had a big 'ol chunk of dirt"
• "If we were really good, we didn't dig dessert"
• "Didn't have no telephone, didn't have no FAX machine"
• "All we had was a couple cans and a crummy piece of string"
• "Didn't have no swimming pool when I was just a lad"
• "Our neighbor's septic tank was the closest thing we had"
• "Didn't have no dental floss, had to use old rusty nails"
• "Didn't have Nintendo, we just poured salt on snails"
• "Didn't have no water bed, had to sleep on broken glass"
• "Didn't have no lawnmower, we used our teeth to cut the grass"
• "My dad would whoop us every night till a quarter after twelve"
• "Then he'd get too tired and he'd make us whoop us'selves"
• "Then he'd chop me into pieces and play frisbee with my brain"

(complete lyrics here)