In My Day...
From a Washington Post Report, in which readers were asked to tell Gen-Xers how much harder they 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. (Bill Flavin, Alexandria) 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 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) THE WINNER: 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)
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
In my day, we didn't have dogs or cats. All I had was Silver Beauty, my beloved paper clip. (Jennifer Hart, Arlington)
When I was your age, we didn't have fake doggie-do. We only had real doggie-do, and no one thought it was one bit funny. (Brendan Bassett, Columbia)
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)
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 Silver Spring station and it was a bloody stump at the end. But the base fare was only a dollar. (Russell Beland, Springfield)
In my day, we didn't have Strom Thurmond. Oh, wait. Yes we did. (Peg Sheeran, Vienna)
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)
Originally published November 14, 2002.
