A Starter Pack for Our "Get Off My Lawn" Years

I love those Buzzfeed listicles, especially the ones that break down things that are meant to make us feel united in our advanced age.

“This was your life if you were a child of the 80s” posts get me every time.

I try not to be one of those people who is all ‘man, kids today just don’t get….’ But the reality is, as I get older and think back to how much more of a pain in the ass it was to get stuff done in my childhood, I have to laugh, and then I get the intense urge to create my own listacle.

So, put on your bi-focals and get ready to commiserate.

Back in my day...

We didn’t have cell phones or tablets. If we were lucky, we got a phone in our room at twelve-years-old with strict rules about its use. Mom could and would listen at the door and know all about our lives whether we knew it or liked it.

If you wanted to call your friend but your mom was on the phone, that meant you had to wait, and then wait some more. How many times were you on the phone and someone picked up and you screamed "get off the phone!"? That can't happen on cellphones, people! Our kids will never know that annoyance!
Not having tablets or phones also meant our viewing options for the shows we liked were limited at best. We’d have one, maybe two giant box televisions we had to share with the rest of the family. If big brother wanted to watch G.I. Joe and Transformers, guess what? You were watching G.I. Joe and Transformers. Don’t like it? Your options were two; go outside to play or read a book.
Speaking of T.V. shows, remember having to watch them when they were actually on? Man, those were the days. There was no PVR. There was no Android box or YouTube. If you wanted to know what antics Mike and Boner were getting up to, you had to actually watch it Tuesdays at 8:30 or you were SOL. Image that, kids!
Music listening was a whole other world back then, too. Road trips usually meant sitting, waiting for the family Walkman to become available. And, you had to be quick, or you’d miss your brother rewinding a song, thereby increasing his time on said Walkman.

There was no iTunes. If you wanted to hear your favourite song, you had to sit with your finger on the record button on your ghettoblaster and hit record at the very second the DJ stopped talking, the second it came on. You had to work for your favourite tunes!
When our parents wanted to put on our favourite movie, that we had just finished watching ten minutes before, you know what they had to do? They had to rewind the GD tape while we whined. Could you imagine having to deal with Elsa madness in the 80s? Your VCR would have caught fire from all the play and rewind action it would have seen on an average day. The horror!
If you wanted to know where you had seen that actor before, you had to write a letter to the TV Guide and hope they'd pick it and answer it, but they never did. You couldn't Google that stuff! You'd just have to go on, for the rest of your life, not knowing who they were. And it was maddening!
It wasn’t all bad, though. When we were kids, losing the T.V. remote was impossible! It was connected to the T.V. via a short cord that you had to get up to use. So, there’s that.