Wow: Old Farts

I went to Toys 'R Us today with some of my friends. When we went there we found toys that would have made our childhood safer, more stimulating---or just better.

We found Nerf swords, Easy-Bake Ovens, and some of my beloved board games like Candyland. Now I wasn't so lucky to use the "nerf" swords, because we had to play with sticks in the yard when we were younger.

It hurt like H. E.double hockey sticks  when we hit each other with those sticks. Hell was once a bad word too.

No, I'm not exaggerating. We may have had television growing up and may have grown up with the internet---but that doesn't mean we sat inside all day on the computer and watched tv all day. I made mud pies and played hiding-go-seek. I was always terrible at that game.

I actually asked the guy at Toys R' Us for a FURBY. A flippin' FURBY.

Then about a month ago, I couldn't sleep and I was watching some tv. (What else do you do when all you can think about is your job interview?) Then I found 90's Nickelodeon starts at midnight on weeknights.

That is just the icing on the cake.

Today, I really feel old, because, dressup, sleepovers, babysitters, and when MTV first released the "Real World", was almost twenty years ago.

Wow.

I was in a production of RENT, the musical last fall and it dawned on me, when the spread of AIDS and HIV infections were rising, in 1990. I wasn't born yet, but that was twenty two years ago, yet the show seemed so new and contemporary. It was before it's time.

I also remember vaguely the Bill Clinton political scandal. I remember a lot of Bill Clinton on the news, all the time.( You must remember I was about 6 or 7, so I remember this event vaguely.)

Yes--that scandal.

So, some nights I'll stay awake and watch Rocko's Modern Life, or Ahh Real Monsters in the morning because it would be on at 6 am. My favorite show had to be "Hey Arnold." All you 90's children know what I'm talking about. The cartoon with Rhonda the snotty girl and Helga the girl who was in love with Arnold the footballhead, and Lila the midwestern cutie who Arnold had a crush on.

Someone told me today that MARVEL is redoing all their comic books and starting at 1 all over. They need to bring a new generation a newer, better publication because their standards are higher. They are used to Playstation 3 and Xbox graphics, they aren't going settle for doodles and comic strips with word boxes, they will probably be interactive dvds that can play 10 different stories with computer animated characters and settings.

Better yet--they will be BLu-Ray. I'm still not sure what that contraption is.

I grew up with a 4X3 television. The children of the new millennium  are growing up with Hd te;evision video-games, oversaturation the media has in their lives. I remember the turn of the century, we partied like it was 1999, on New Years Eve of 1999.

It sure had a big impact on mine growing up. When I was growing up, I would watch a movie or a television show and the characters would kiss. I don't know who taught me that you were supposed to kiss someone you liked--my family--or the T.V.

 I grew up with Playstation 1 and Gameboy COLOR and N64. they grew up with Nintendo Wii, and PS2 and 3, Xbox and Gamecube. We bought all that, but we had the original first.

Ah, but we didn't. The generation before us did. Sorry guys, but we need to accept the fact that we were not first.

It's hard to believe that while I was busy living my life, a whole ten years have gone by with new kids in school who knew how to turn on the television before they knew how to write their name. Now there's a whole new generation of kids who are being born in the new millennium who will never know the joys of playing outside, what a sitcom is, what a standard size television is, that people actually used to ring your doorbell when they wanted to come out and play, we remembered phone numbers of people we liked to call, and being a teenager and graduating high school seemed to be like it was a lifetime away.

Now all the older people reading this will say, "You feel old?? You're still a kid! I'll tell you about feeling old!" Yes they're right when twenty years may seem like not so long ago.

To us however, it's our whole lifetime.

Wow.