The Grumpy Old Man Thread (or, Why Today Sucks)

[Trollheart]

You kids think you have it made these days with your in-ter-net and your X-Box! Don't know you're born! Here are some of the things you have never experienced....

1. Wondering how you're going to get more money for the weekend? You took out what you wanted at the bank and now it's closed. Too young to have a credit card, and what are ATMs sonny?

2. Waiting to make a phone call in a public box. Many houses didn't even have phones, and there was no such thing as a mobile or cell phone. If you were out and wanted to check in, find one of these,

hope it wasn't vandalised, make sure you had change on you (phonecards? What are they?) and if someone wanted to get in touch with you while you were out, well, just tough. No way to do that.

3. Watching all the ads. No such thing as pausing live television. No way to record anything till about the eighties and even then video recorders were damn expensive. Programmes were shown once (usually once a week) and that was it. No repeat. No plus one channel. No weekend catch-up TV and definitely no On Demand service.

4. Going to a cinema to see the latest movie. No downloading of pirate copies, no Netflix or YouTube or Hulu. And when the video did come out, much later, expect it to be in the region of about fifty to sixty quid.

5. Dialling on a rotary phone. Took ages just to dial one number, and if it was busy, back around the dial you must go.

6. Buying all your albums on vinyl. Record to cassette tape only. Your record collection would fill shelves, even rooms. Ensure you had a good sound system to play them on.

7. Paying the conductor on a bus rather than the driver as you got on.

8. The only way to take photographs was with a real camera, and you had to have some sort of half-decent knowledge to be able to use one. Except for Polaroids and Instamatics.

9. The only way to see the time was on a clock or a watch

Back with more later; I have to have my afternoon nap or I'll get even grumpier.

Fellow grumps, feel free to add your own experiences.

[OccultHawk]

Back in the day if you got amped up on speed you had to watch static on tv from midnight to 6 AM.

[rubber soul]

No microwaves. You had to cook everything on the stove.

[OccultHawk]

Most important of all: big hairy pussies.

[Cuthbert]

I've done a fair few of the things listed in the OP and I'm only in my 20s.

You missed one of the most obvious ones which was accessing porn. If you wanted to have a wank before the internet era, your options were your imagination, the Argos catalogue underwear section or a discarded magazine/friend's dad's videos. You really had to earn your wanks. But guys now can just fire up the smartphone and access a plethora of explicit HQ material.

[OccultHawk]

Haha. Yeah, the internet is like having a subscription to every magazine that used to line the smut shops in Times Square.

You know, I’ve never been to Times Square since they cleaned it up.

[Frownland]

What are these so called "phone calls"?

[rubber soul]

No ads for prescriptions (In America) and no commercials right after by lawyers cashing in on a class action lawsuit against the drug manufacturer who made the previous commercial.

[Plankton]

The days before Pong, where you went outside and played in the grass mud and dirt, not worrying about all the BS people are concerned with these days. Kids were generally healthier. I see too many kids all pasty and frail from a life of video games and Hot Pockets, hardly setting foot outside for long periods of time. It's not natural. Good growth of muscle and bone structure starts at early ages, and if you don't build a solid foundation for a healthy lifestyle early on, you'll have a synergistic effect as time goes on and you grow older. Atrophy sets in quicker and you're more prone to disease and illnesses. The "play for an hour a day" campaign is a good idea and a kind of compromise to meet children in the middle with all the options set before them with today's technology, but imho kids need more exercise than just an hour. Basically, what I'm trying to say is: Gtfo the house ya little brats.

...and in summation:

Spoiler for ya spoiled rotten little booger flickers:

[rubber soul]

That's true. When I was a kid the only thing that might make us couch potatoes would have been the Saturday Morning cartoons (do they still exist?). In the afternoon we had to actually socialize. Usually we'd ride bikes or play baseball, football, etc. You don't seem to see a lot of that anymore.