Why is it that when I saw this ‘old-style’ ring pull on a Diet Coke in Shanghai, I felt all nostalgic?
I mean, it’s only a ring pull … and lets face it, they were a right pain in the arse … but for some reason, it took me right back to the ‘good ol’ days’ of growing up in West Bridgford, Nottingham.
However, after a few minutes I came to a revelation … sure, there were some good times growing up, but compared to what the kids get nowadays, I was totally and utterly ripped off.
Yeah, yeah, I know I sound like Mr Grumpy Old Sod … the sort of bloke I vowed I’d never become … but now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of thirty-six, I can’t help but think the youth of today are lucky bastards!
When I was a kid we didn’t have the internet – if we wanted to know something, we had to go to the goddamned library and look it up ourselves and there was no email … oh no … we had to actually write letters with a pen – and then have to walk all the way up the road to put it in the bloody mailbox where it would take a week to get there.
There were no MP3s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to go to the goddamned record store and shoplift it yourself … or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and then the DJ would usually talk all over the beginning and screw it all up anyway!
You want to hear hardship?
You couldn’t just download porn! Oh no … you had to bribe some homeless bloke [or a mates brother] to go to the local newsagent and buy you a copy of ‘Mayfair’ – which was about as rude as the lingerie section of the Grattan catalogue!
We didn’t have fancy stuff like ‘Call Waiting‘! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a bloody irritating busy signal! And there was no fancy ‘Caller ID‘ either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who the hell it was – it could be your boss, your Mum, your teacher, a collections agent, a drug dealer … anyone! It was pot luck every call!
And we didn’t have fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had a piece of shit Atari 2600 or worse, a Phillips G7000 that sold itself as a personal computer but all you could make it do was show your name on the TV screen in 20 shades of stupid pink! We didn’t get cool games with huge background stories, we had rubbish like ‘Space Invaders‘ and ‘Asteroids‘ where the graphics sucked big time! You had to use your imagination! There were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! You could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died!
Just like LIFE!
Hell, there was no such thing as stadium seating at the cinema! All the seats were the same soddin’ height so if the guy in front of you was tall, you got screwed!
And cable television? Don’t make me laugh! Back then we had 3 channels and then too huge fanfare, we got a 4th. We didn’t have 100 channels with onscreen programming menu! You had to use a little book called the TV Times to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning … for 10 minutes … and it was crap like DR Snuggles!
D’ya hear what I’m saying!?!
You kids today have got it too easy! You’re spoilt, goddamn spoilt! Let me tell you something, you little sods wouldn’t last five minutes back in ’78 … even the Coke cans would hurt you!!!