Note: The Washington Post had a contest wherein participants were asked to tell the younger generation how much harder they had had it “in the old days.” Winners, runners-up, and honorable mentions are listed below.
Second Runner-Up: In my day, we couldn’t afford shoes, so we went barefoot. In winter, we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction.
First Runner-Up: In my day, we didn’t 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 you’d weigh the needle down with something like quarters, which we never had because our allowances were way too small, so we’d use our skate keys instead and end up forgetting they were taped to the record player arm so that we couldn’t adjust our skates, which didn’t 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.
And the winner: In my day, we didn’t have rocks. We had to go down to the creek and wash our clothes by beating them with our heads.
Honorable Mentions:
In my day, we didn’t have fancy health-food restaurants. Every day we ate lots of easily recognizable animal parts, along with potatoes.
In my day, we didn’t have hand-held calculators. We had to do addition on our fingers. To subtract, we had to have some fingers amputated.
In my day, we didn’t 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 next station and it was a bloody stump at the end. But the base fare was only a dollar.
In my day, we didn’t have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms. 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.
Back in my day, ’60 Minutes’ wasn’t just a bunch of gray-haired, liberal 80-year-old guys. It was a bunch of gray-haired, liberal 60-year-old guys.
In my day, we didn’t 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.
Back in my day, they hadn’t invented electricity. We had to watch television by candlelight.
In my day, we didn’t have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did.
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