NOTE: I was asked today if I could find this posting from last year sometime. I did and decided to re-post it for anyone who may have missed it. 

“When I was your age…”
This cute message to the younger generation was sent in by one of my “over 30” Blog readers. A friend suggested that I “Blog it,” so here it is. Oh yeah, I “cleaned it up” just a bit, and added the visuals.

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning uphill… barefoot… BOTH ways; “Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crapola on kids about how hard I had it, and how easy they’ve got it!
But now that I’m over the ripe old age of thirty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today. You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!
And I hate to say it but you kids today don’t know how good you’ve got it!

So EASY!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have the Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves in the card catalogue!! There was no e-mail!! We had to actually write somebody a letter, with a pen! Then had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

So EASY to Rock Out
There were no MP3’s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ’d would usually talk over the beginning and screw it all up!

Hard To Imagine
We didn’t have fancy stuff like Call Waiting! If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal, that’s it!
And we didn’t have Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn’t know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances!

So Antiquated!
We didn’t have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had the Atari 2600! With games like ‘Space Invaders’ and ‘asteroids’, we were a little square! You actually had to use your Imagination!!
And there were no multiple levels or screens; it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder, and faster and faster until you died!

NOT!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on television! When it came to channel surfing! You had to get off your backside and walk over to the TV to change the channel, and there was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rats!

OMG!
And we didn’t have microwaves, if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the stove … Imagine that!
You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes way back in 1980!
Regards,
Over 30

Can You See an Important Lesson Here?

In 1986, Mikele Mebembe was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University.
On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Mikele approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant’s foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Mikele worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Mikele stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Mikele never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Mikele was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Mikele and his son Tapu were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Mikele, lifted its front foot off the ground, and then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Mikele couldn’t help wondering if this was the same elephant. Mikele summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Mikele’s legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

It probably wasn’t the same elephant.

LOL
Give yourself a break. Murders, plane crashes and the economy grab the headlines these days. I guess they always have. In spite of all that’s ugly, you can still find something to laugh about. Bring some humor into your workday. Humor makes everyone feel better about anything. Make your customers laugh and they will like you. People buy from people they like. It’s all so easy, and all so important. Did you hear the one about…?

Joe Wurzelbacher
As we struggle to make sense of this year’s election, Joe the Plumber takes center stage, being mentioned 21 times in the last debate, while the old buzz word “change” was only mentioned once. I think that we are really lost in lies and minutia. I know you have read it all, but what bugs me is how a guy making $40,000 a year with an existing tax lien of $1,100 can make a legitimate argument about how the impact of a tax proposal on people earning over $250,000 a year would have on him. Even worse is that it was brought to everyones attention without being verified as factual.  
At the end of this CBS News media interview Joe said, “I just hope I’m not making too much of a fool of myself.” My take is that he already knows what he is; now we all do. The real fools here are the politicians that have elected to make Joe an issue in a national debate for the presidency of the United States of America. The rest of the world must be holding their ribs in laughter.

Mahalo to “Runaway” for This

A biker was riding along a California beach when suddenly the sky clouded above his head and, in a booming voice, the Lord said, ‘Because you have tried to be faithful to me in all ways, I will grant you one wish’.

The biker pulled over and said:

‘Build a bridge to Hawaii so I can ride over anytime I want’. The Lord said, ‘Your request is materialistic, think of the enormous challenges for that kind of undertaking. The supports required to reach the bottom of the Pacific! The concrete and steel it would take! It will nearly exhaust several natural resources. I can do it, but it is hard for me to justify your desire for worldly things. Take a little more time and think of something that would honor and glorify me’.

The biker thought about it for a long time. Finally he said:

‘Lord, I wish that I could understand my wife. I want to know how she feels inside, what she’s thinking when she gives me the silent treatment, why she cries, what she means when she says nothing is wrong, and how I can make a woman truly happy?’.

The Lord replied:

‘Do you want two lanes or four on that bridge?’