The Washington Post recently had a contest
wherein participants were asked to tell the younger
generation how much harder they had had it "in the old
days." Winners, runners-up, and honorable mentions are
listed below.

  Second Runner-Up:

  In my day, we couldn't afford shoes, so we went
  barefoot. In winter, we had to wrap our feet with
  barbed wire for traction.

  First Runner-Up:

  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.

  And the winner:

  In my day, we didn't have rocks. We had to go down to
  the creek and wash our clothes by beating them with
  our heads.

  Honorable Mentions:

  In my day, we didn't have fancy health-food
  restaurants. Every day we ate lots of easily
  recognizable animal parts, along with potatoes.

  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 way to the
  next 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 water. We had to smash
  together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

  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.

  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.

  Back in my day, they hadn't invented electricity. We
  had to watch television by candlelight.

  In my day, we didn't have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait.
  Yes we did.


And here are a couple of favorites of mine:

I was so poor growing up, if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't have
had anything to play with.
   -Rodney Dangerfield


 When I was a boy our Nintendo
 Was carved from an old Apple tree
 And we used garden hose to connect it
 To our steam-powered color tv. 

 But it still beat that ancient Atari
 'Cuz I almost went blind, don'tcha know,
 Playing Breakout and Pong on a video game
 Hooked up to the radio.

 And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
 Barefoot, uphill both ways,
 Through blizzards in summer and winter
 Back in the good old days.
 Back when Fortran was not even Three-tran
 And the PC was only a toy
 And we did our computing by gaslight
 When I was a boy.

 When I was a boy all our networks
 Were for hauling in fish from the sea--
 Our bawd rate was eight bits an hour (and she was worth it!),
 And our IP address was just 3.

 And you kids who complain that the World Wide Web
 Is too slow oughtta cut out your bitchin',
 'Cuz when I was a boy every packet
 Was delivered by carrier pigeon (1)

 And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
 Barefoot, uphill both ways,
 Through blizzards in summer and winter
 Back in the good old days.
 Back when Fortran was not even Two-tran
 And the mainframe was only a toy
 And we did our computing by torchlight
 When I was a boy.

 When I was a boy our IS shop
 Built relational tables from wood,
 And we wrappered our data in oilcloth
 To preserve it the best that we could.

 And we carried our bits in a bucket,
 And our mainframe weighed 900 tons,
 And we programmed in ones and in zeros
 And sometimes we ran out of ones.

 And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
 Barefoot, uphill both ways,
 Through blizzards in summer and winter
 Back in the good old days.
 Back when Fortran was not even One-tran
 And the abacus? Only a toy!
 And we did our computing in primordial darkness
 When I was a boy.
Copyright  1997 by Frank Hayes, Firebird Arts & Music (BMI)

(1) NOTE: Really - check out this RFC!
          http://www.henryfarkas.com/humor/rfc1149 
          But do note the date...



Oh, yes: there's also this classic from rec.humor.funny:
http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/99/Mar/cameron.html 

Dear Mr. Cameron: 

As a courtesy, we are sending you a copy of this letter we recently wrote
your 15 year old daughter in response to a query we received from her. 

Dear Ms. Cameron. 

Thank you for your letter. Yes, we are pleased to report, your father's
old high school is still standing and our library was able to find
yearbooks dating "all the way back" to his graduation. In fact, a few
teachers even remember your father, which I will get to in a moment.

In answer to your first question: In every picture extant of your father
he is well shod, wearing what I believe were called "earth shoes" back
then. Also, the weather here is moderate, with snow generally lasting from
December until March--hardly the entire school year. Thus his descriptions
of the conditions under which he "struggled" to school in the morning do,
as you suggested, seem a bit exaggerated. In fact, our bus logs are
(remarkably) still intact, revealing that not only was your father a
registered passenger, but that his parents paid the extra ten dollars a
month for door-to-door delivery.

I am sure there were days when your father was very "sharply dressed," as
you state he puts it, but in every single photograph I was able to uncover
he is wearing exactly the same thing: bell bottom blue jeans with white
strings trailing from the edges onto the floor, horizontal rents in the
knees, and no belt buckle. His T-shirt displays a message easily
communicated with hand gestures. His hair hangs past his shoulders and
looks as if it was exposed to a lot of wind - perhaps he rode the school
bus with the window open.

As to academics and "concentrating on the basics," one must remember the
times: the "basics" back then may very well have embraced some of your
father's elective subjects, which included "Personal Citizenship,"
"Ecology," and one which apparently was called "Relevance." We have no
record of what, if anything, was taught in these classes. What records we
do have show that your father did indeed take Geometry, just as he claims.
In fact, he took it his sophomore year, repeated it his junior year and
repeated the course again his senior year - Geometry was required for
graduation.

Now as to Mr. Muggins, who had your father in a class called "Problems of
Modern Relationships." Mr. Muggins does not wish to dispute the claim that
your father always had his homework done early, he merely wants to point
out that no matter when it was done, it was always handed in late. In
fact, your father sticks out in Mr. Muggins's mind as having the most
outrageous excuses for being unprepared, including having to evacuate his
home because it was infected with the China Syndrome.

Your father was not, sad to say, President of the Student Council. Perhaps
he is confusing student government with a social group called "The
Slackers," which Mr. Muggins recalls was a group of boys who sat in the
hallway and made loud groaning noises whenever an attractive girl strode
past. Your father was assistant vice president of the club, and, to our
knowledge, is the only past member not currently serving time in a federal
penitentiary.

One thing IS completely verifiable: your father's name is, indeed, carved
above the door to the school. Please advise that, now that we have noticed
it, we will need to have it sanded out and refinished, at a cost of
approximately three hundred dollars. We would appreciate it if your father
would agree to pay for the damage without having to engage lawyers.

The honor roll to which he apparently referred is not above the door, it
hangs outside my office. I will leave unanswered the question as to
whether his name is upon it.

Thank you very much for your letter, which we found most amusing. Be sure
to tell your father hello from Mr. Muggins.