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In MY Day... The Washington Post Report from Week 228, in which you were asked to tell Gen-Xers how much harder you had it in the old days: Second Runner-up: In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went
barefoot. In the winter we had to wrap our feet with barbed wire for traction. 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. In my day, attitudes were different. For example,
women didn't like sex. At least that is what they told me. In my day, we didn't have days. There was only
time for work, time for prayer and time for sleep. The sheriff would go around and tell
everyone when to change. In my day, people could only dream of hitchhiking
a ride on a comet. In my day, we didn't have fancy health-food
restaurants. Every day we ate lots of easily recognizable animal parts, along with
potatoes drenched in melted fat from those animals. And we're all as strong as AAGGKK-GAAK
Urrgh. 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 damn way to the
Silver Spring 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 Strom Thurmond. Oh,
wait. Yes, we did. 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. In my day, we wore our pants up around our
armpits. Monstrous wedgies, but we looked snappy. 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.
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