Author: Peter Saxon

The Washington Post Report in which people were asked to tell Gen-Xers how much harder they had it in the old days:

Third Place:
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

Second Place:
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

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

Honorable Mentions:

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

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 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

In my day, we didn’t have water. We had to smash together our own hydrogen and oxygen atoms.
Diana Hugue, Bowie