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| » the good old times | |
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- Roger Allen The truth is, the older people get, the more they tell you about "how good you have it right now", and "how hard it was for them", when they were at your age! I wonder who came up with "the good old times" anyway? As far as I can tell, "the good old times" happend, but no one was there. I bet everyone had that conversation, where someone started his speech with something like "you know, when I was at your age...", right? Don't you hate it? I hate it! I took the cab the other day, and this old guy was driving. We started to talk a littlebit, and I told him, that I hate it when I drive in my car, and people seem to forget how to actually drive properly. I told him, that I get mad when I see other people drive like retards, and that I sometimes think, that I am the only one in this universe, who should be allowed to use roads. "Stop complaining" he said. "You don't know how fucking good you have it, child!". And then he told me, how he had to walk 30 miles to his school, bidirectional, bare-footed and always uphill, while a blizzard was raging for the whole year. He told me, how he had to work after school, for 20 pennys a day in a dark coal-mine, in order to buy food for his mother and his seven sisters. Of course he was very good at school, because after work, he pulled out a candle and learned... Although I carefully listned to the old man, I kinda got pissed off. I said to myself: Never will I tell stories about how good the kids have it nowadays, and how bad we had it back then! Never, will I complain about my past! ... But when I compare my youth and my childhood with the kids nowadays, I have to say: Do you know how good you all have it? You kids are living in a fucking fantasy world which we would've called utopia! Damn it, no one cares for "Euro Disney" anymore, and you know why? Because the real world is much more fun than "Disneyland". Fuck Mickey Mouse, I have a Playstation2! Take the internet for instance. When I was in school, there was nothing like the internet. If I had to make a presentation about World War 2, I had to go to the stupid library, which happend to be on the other site of my town. And they had no printer, computers or whatsoever. When I was lucky, I could use the copy-machine, if not, I had to write the whole shit down. They didn't have google in the library either. The only thing they had, were a billions of racks with billions of books and if you were lucky, there was a sign over one of these racks that said "history". Nowadays, Kids just go online and "google their stuff". "Google" became an actual verb. The other day, I overheard a conversation between two kids. It was something like this: Kid1: Any idea who this Napoleon Dude was? Kid2: No. But let me google it! "Let me google it?" Why don't you google up the meaning of "book", dumbass... When I was in school, We didn't have no emails, no chats and shit. If you wanted to send someone something, you had to write a real mail, with a real pencil. Then you had to buy stamps and envelopes and bring the whole shit to a real mailbox. It could have taken a week or more, till the fucking letter arrived! Well at least that hasn't changed... And what about cell-phones? We didn't have cell-phones either. When we were out to party and needed our parents to pick us up, we had to make an appointment. And there was no way to cancel that date once you left home. If the party sucked, we had to stay there for HOURS, until the parents showed up. Or what about a car accident on the highway? Do you see the small yellow phones on the side of the road? These are a remembrance of the "pre cell-phone era"! There was no "knocking" while you were on the phone either. When you phoned with somebody, you simply were not accesible. People today don't remember anymore, but back then, we had the busy signal! It was the most annoying noise ever created. If it was busy, it could take hours, to get the person on the phone, that you wanted to talk to. And we didn't had those nice displays on the phone, like you have nowadays. We never knew, who the fuck was calling. It could've been your teacher, your mom, your drugdealer... You've never knew who called. Back then, it was kinda risky to pick up the phone! Today people look on the display and say "A fuck it, it's my girlfriend again, keep playing..." Even stealing was a whole different story, when I was young. There was no Napster or Kazaa and stuff like that. If you wanted to steal music, you had to go to the next record store and try to hide that 12inch under your sweater. If we wanted to get good music for free, you had to listen to the charts-show in the radio and tape that shit. And most likely, the host snapped right in and told you about tomorrows weather, while your favorite song was on. And the same thing goes for lyrics. Nowadays everybody can sing along. You know why? Because the lyrics are out. When I was a kid, I had to listen to the music and try to remember the words. Thats why I thought, that Michael Jackson was in love with a girl from the library and not from liberia... But you know what was more of a problem, than music? Porn! Thats right fellas, porn. Erotic entertainment. If you wanted porn, you had to bribe the bum around the corner with some off daddys booze, and hopefully he bought you the new issue of the playboy magazine. If that was no option, you had to deal with the regular underwear-section from your moms fashion-catalog. This doesn't seem to be an issue today: People download software, that protects them from porn while surfing on the web... Back then we had no cable TV. There were no 300+ channels with seperate cartoon channels only for kids. Once a week, on saturday, if you were lucky, there was a cartoon on TV. And it was not the cool stuff, with superheros and shit, it was some cartoon about an ugly little boy who lost his parents in italy, a strange panda that had incredible big eyes, or a guy that obviously was gay, flew on a giant duck and talked to a hamster. That was the shit I was watching, when I was a kid. I remember, the first time, I saw Captain Future. That blew me away, man. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Captain Future was the best! If Captain Future was still out there, he would whoop Son Gokus ass, let me tell you that! And what about toys? Do you kids know, how fucking great your toys are? When I was in your age, there was no Playstation2 and no Xbox. If you were lucky, there was an Atari 2600 with two games: Space Invaders and Asteroids. And there was nothing like different maps, or levels and stuff you could donwload from the internet to enhance the gameplay. There were no special tactics that made the game more interesting. It was the same fucking screen, all the time. The same annoying graphics, no matter how good you were. Sometimes, when the game was really really good, the background color switched from green to red. That was after almost ten hours of playing. It was the only special effect the game had. It was so great, that you would immediatly call a friend to tell him that the screen color changed! Another thing about computer games back then were, that you couldn't finish the games. You know why? Because they had no end! I knew people who tried to finish Pacman...they all died! The games just became harder and more frustrating. And there were no 3D graphics, no railgun,no leagues and tournaments and shit. Multiplayer meant, that a friend came over and you compared the highscores... Yeah, that was the time. The good old time... |
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| © Etienne Gardé am 02.12.2003 | |