Things your children may never know about
deathwish01b
Published
08/01/2011
THINGS YOUR CHILDREN MAY NEVER KNOW ABOUT
Our grandparents told us things about the world of their childhood that we probably didn't believe. Walking uphill both ways on a school day being chief among them. Thanks to the inexorable march of time, there are things you'll tell your grandkids about that they won't believe, and may not even be able to grasp the concept of.
Good riddance to:
Having to rewind a movie and drive it back to the store unless you want to get hit with a fee.
TVs that weigh a hundred pounds or more. On the plus side, there was no "inception" movie to reference if somebody used their old TV as a stand for their new TV.
Rotary dial televisions with no remote control (unless you count the kids).
Watching TV when the networks say you should. How dare they presume to command us?
Dial-up modem screech. Also, having to stay off the internet because someone in the family was waiting for a call.
Trying to peel the perforated edges off tractor-feed printer paper. Oh, and the noise the dot-matrix printer made while printing.
Counting in kilobytes.
Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
Shopping only during the day, Monday thru Saturday. Stinkin' blue laws.
Waiting hours to download something.
Rotary phones.
Having to buy vacuum-cleaner bags.
Not knowing who is calling you on the phone.
Slide rules.
Non-in-line roller skates.
Station wagons.
"The player ate my tape!!!"
80s fashion and hair.
The headaches when the dorks in the computer lab figured out the "sound" command in Basic or Pascal and got their DOGWHSTL.EXE program stuck in an infinite loop.
8-character filenames.
Shock the Monkey.
8-digit calculators with only six non-number buttons: On, Plus, Minus, Multiplication, Division and Equals. Only good for displaying the numbers 58,008 and 55,378,008 before the fun wears off.
Paper porn.
Gone but not forgotten:
That buzz you get when you've just spent ten minutes blowing dust out of your NES and cartridge to make it work.
Riding in the bed of a pickup with your siblings on the way home from the city.
Blowing your entire allowance at the arcade.
Control pad, two to six buttons, select and start.
Walking more than three miles from home to town, buying a long-neck Dr. Pepper, drinking it on the way home and maybe stopping off at a friend's house to say hello on the way. Without worrying about getting picked up by pedophiles.
Sitting at home for hours with your radio on, the built in tape-deck on "record" and "pause," and unpausing it when a favorite song comes on.
Things we should try to save, but probably can't:
Privacy
The ability to skip the commercials and previews on a movie
The recognition that cup size and talent are not the same thing outside of porn.
Storage media that don't get ruined by scratches and thumbprints during normal handling.
Jobs in America other than cashier, burger-flipper, prison guard, politician and CEO.
Recording broadcasts on removable media for posterity.
Quality control.
Not worrying about getting intentionally murdered by asshole drivers for the unspeakable crime of obeying the traffic laws.
Cash. Because maybe some people don't want their life savings to go bye-bye next time the banks fuck up.
Child entrepreneurship.
Non-corrupt cops and public officials.
Truth in advertizing.
Nostalgia movies made by actual fans, not just people who want money and decide to google the words "fan site" and make a movie loosely based on the first thing that comes up.
Free TV.
Celebrities that don't immediately have legal trouble, a scandal, drug problems, etc. the instant they become famous.
Coffee served at the proper temperature. Fast-food coffee is meant to be served scalding hot so that you don't have to taste it.
Stuff that needs to go away:
"Reality" TV. Seriously, take your Survivor and your American Idol and your Bachelor and Bachelorette and GTFO. Real reality TV is AFV, RealTV, MaxX, the news and that bloopers show whose title I can't think of at the moment. Unscripted, no-rules-that-don't-come-from-the-FCC reality. That other so-called "reality" TV is what happens when you leave a cancelled Nickelodeon game show in the back of the fridge for twenty years next to The Gong Show.
"Motion-controlled" video games. Video games are video games, exercise machines are exercise machines, and the two should not breed.
Sports video games. Go outside if you want to play sports. That way you won't lose your game if everyone in your neighborhood runs their AC at the same time and causes a blackout.
Laws designed to protect people from the natural consequences of their own stupidity.
Tags on blog sites separated by spaces instead of commas. :P
Our grandparents told us things about the world of their childhood that we probably didn't believe. Walking uphill both ways on a school day being chief among them. Thanks to the inexorable march of time, there are things you'll tell your grandkids about that they won't believe, and may not even be able to grasp the concept of.
Good riddance to:
Having to rewind a movie and drive it back to the store unless you want to get hit with a fee.
TVs that weigh a hundred pounds or more. On the plus side, there was no "inception" movie to reference if somebody used their old TV as a stand for their new TV.
Rotary dial televisions with no remote control (unless you count the kids).
Watching TV when the networks say you should. How dare they presume to command us?
Dial-up modem screech. Also, having to stay off the internet because someone in the family was waiting for a call.
Trying to peel the perforated edges off tractor-feed printer paper. Oh, and the noise the dot-matrix printer made while printing.
Counting in kilobytes.
Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
Shopping only during the day, Monday thru Saturday. Stinkin' blue laws.
Waiting hours to download something.
Rotary phones.
Having to buy vacuum-cleaner bags.
Not knowing who is calling you on the phone.
Slide rules.
Non-in-line roller skates.
Station wagons.
"The player ate my tape!!!"
80s fashion and hair.
The headaches when the dorks in the computer lab figured out the "sound" command in Basic or Pascal and got their DOGWHSTL.EXE program stuck in an infinite loop.
8-character filenames.
Shock the Monkey.
8-digit calculators with only six non-number buttons: On, Plus, Minus, Multiplication, Division and Equals. Only good for displaying the numbers 58,008 and 55,378,008 before the fun wears off.
Paper porn.
Gone but not forgotten:
That buzz you get when you've just spent ten minutes blowing dust out of your NES and cartridge to make it work.
Riding in the bed of a pickup with your siblings on the way home from the city.
Blowing your entire allowance at the arcade.
Control pad, two to six buttons, select and start.
Walking more than three miles from home to town, buying a long-neck Dr. Pepper, drinking it on the way home and maybe stopping off at a friend's house to say hello on the way. Without worrying about getting picked up by pedophiles.
Sitting at home for hours with your radio on, the built in tape-deck on "record" and "pause," and unpausing it when a favorite song comes on.
Things we should try to save, but probably can't:
Privacy
The ability to skip the commercials and previews on a movie
The recognition that cup size and talent are not the same thing outside of porn.
Storage media that don't get ruined by scratches and thumbprints during normal handling.
Jobs in America other than cashier, burger-flipper, prison guard, politician and CEO.
Recording broadcasts on removable media for posterity.
Quality control.
Not worrying about getting intentionally murdered by asshole drivers for the unspeakable crime of obeying the traffic laws.
Cash. Because maybe some people don't want their life savings to go bye-bye next time the banks fuck up.
Child entrepreneurship.
Non-corrupt cops and public officials.
Truth in advertizing.
Nostalgia movies made by actual fans, not just people who want money and decide to google the words "fan site" and make a movie loosely based on the first thing that comes up.
Free TV.
Celebrities that don't immediately have legal trouble, a scandal, drug problems, etc. the instant they become famous.
Coffee served at the proper temperature. Fast-food coffee is meant to be served scalding hot so that you don't have to taste it.
Stuff that needs to go away:
"Reality" TV. Seriously, take your Survivor and your American Idol and your Bachelor and Bachelorette and GTFO. Real reality TV is AFV, RealTV, MaxX, the news and that bloopers show whose title I can't think of at the moment. Unscripted, no-rules-that-don't-come-from-the-FCC reality. That other so-called "reality" TV is what happens when you leave a cancelled Nickelodeon game show in the back of the fridge for twenty years next to The Gong Show.
"Motion-controlled" video games. Video games are video games, exercise machines are exercise machines, and the two should not breed.
Sports video games. Go outside if you want to play sports. That way you won't lose your game if everyone in your neighborhood runs their AC at the same time and causes a blackout.
Laws designed to protect people from the natural consequences of their own stupidity.
Tags on blog sites separated by spaces instead of commas. :P
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