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Winners and honorable mentions
from the Washington Post contest in which participants were asked to tell Generation-Xers
how much harder they had it in the old days: |
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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. (Bill Flavin, Alexandria) |
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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.
(Russell Beland, Springfield) |
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And the winner of the velour
bicentennial poster:
In my day, we didn't have no rocks. We had to go down to the creek and wash our clothes by
beating them with our heads. (Barry Blyveis, Columbia) |
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Honorable Mentions: |
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In my day, we didn't have dogs or
cats. All I had was Silver Beauty, my beloved paper clip. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington) |
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In my day, attitudes were
different. For example, women didn't like sex. At least that is what they told me. (Tom
Witte, Gaithersburg) |
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When I was your age, we didn't
have fake doggie-do. We only had real doggie-do, and no one thought it was a damn bit
funny. (Brendan Bassett, Columbia) |
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Back in the 1970s we didn't have
the space shuttle to get all excited about. We had to settle for men walking on the crummy
moon. (Russell Beland, Springfield) |
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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. (Elden Carnahan,Laurel) |
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In my day, people could only dream
of hitchhiking a ride on a comet. (David Ronka, Charlottesville) |
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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. Thud. (Tom Witte, Gaithersburg) |
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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. (Jon Patrick Smith, Washington) |
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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. (Russell Beland, Springfield) |
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We didn't have water. We had to
smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms. (Diana Hugue, Bowie) |
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In my day, we didn't have Strom
Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did. (Peg Sheeran, Vienna) |
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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. (Jonathan Paul, Garrett Park) |
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In my day, we wore our pants up
around our armpits. Monstrous wedgies, but we looked snappy.(Bruce Evans, Washington) |
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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. (Russell Beland, Springfield, & Jerry Pannullo,
Kensington) |
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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. (Sarah M. Wolford, Hanover) |