When I Was Your Age: Difference between revisions

[[File:youragefh_5900youragefh 5900.jpg|frame|And we LIKED it that way!]]

{{quote|''Well, nobody ever drove me to school when it was ninety degrees below,''<br />

''We had to walk butt naked through forty miles of snow.''<br />

''Worked in the coal mine twenty two hours a day for just half a cent,''<br />

''Had to sell my internal organs just to pay the rent!"''|"When I Was Your Age", [["Weird Al" Yankovic]]}}

This is a [[Stock Phrase]] speech by any character denigrating modern kids, modern conveniences, and/or modern behavior against the standards of the speaker's past. It doesn't matter how many conveniences or benefits are available now; the speaker of the '''When I Was Your Age''' rant will not waver in his view that [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]].

This is a perennial favorite of the [[Grumpy Old Man]] or [[Racist Grandma]], and is often played for comedy -- expectcomedy—expect to hear some variation of "I had to walk five miles to school barefoot in the snow! Uphill both ways!"

{{quote| '''Maria Portokalos:''' "Nicko! Don't play with the food! When I was your age, we didn't ''have'' food!"}}

{{quote| "Everything today is improved and I don't like it. I hate it! In my day we didn't have hair dryers. If you wanted to blow dry your hair you stood outside during a hurricane. Your hair was dry but you had a sharp piece of wood driven clear through your skull and that's the way it was and you liked it! You loved it. Whoopee, I'm a human head-kabob! We didn't have Minoxodil and Hair Wings, in my day if your hair started falling out when you were 16, by 19 you were a bald freak. There was nothing you could do about it. Children would spit at you and nobody would mate with you so you couldn't pass on your disgusting baldness genes. You were a public menace, a chromedome by age 20 and that's the way it was and we liked it! We loved it! Hallelujiah look at me, I'm a bald freak, O happy day!"}}

"...rightParadise!" }}

{{quote| '''Earl:''' "When I was your age we didn't have lawn mowers, we didn't have scissors, we had to get down on all fours and graze like a cow."}}

== [[Literature]] ==

* In ''Cloak Of Shadows'' ([[Forgotten Realms|CloakShadow Ofof Shadowsthe Avatar]]'' trilogy) Storm tried to inspire young Harpers complainingwho complain about having to raise early, then Elminster finished them off with a handful of tall tales:

* Steve Macdonald's [https://web.archive.org/web/20131016184719/http://www.stevemacdonald.org/lyrics/wiwab.html "When I Was A Boy"] explains how computing was done in the far-off days of his youth:

''And we carried our mainframebits weighedin 900a tonsbucket,<br />

''And sometimes we ranprogrammed out ofin ones.}} and in zeros

== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==

{{quote| '''Programmer''': When I started programming we didn't have any of these sissy "icons" and "windows". All we had were [[Zeroes and Ones|zeros and ones]] -- and sometimes we didn't even have ones. I wrote an entire database program using only zeros.<br />

{{quote| These kids today with their collector numbers and their newfangled tap symbol. Twenty [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid{{=}}600 Black Lotuses] and 20 [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid{{=}}3871 Plague Rats]. Now that's real '''Magic'''.}}

{{quote| '''Doc''': Why, when I was your age--<br />

{{quote| '''Cranky:''' Oh, look who's come crawling back for advice, even though things are easier than ever! Why don't you ask your newfangled ''super guide'' for help? Back in my day, we had to play through the levels '''ourselves!''' And this controller-shaking thing? We didn't need fancy doodad-filled remotes...Four buttons, that's all we had! Also, what's the big deal about playing simultaneously nowadays? When I was younger, we had to be ''tagged in'' to play?<br />

''[[Beat]] as Cranky tags in an ape just offscreen''<br />

* ''[[Ever QuestEverQuest]]'' added into the game an NPC "Old Man McKenzie". The official description of him is:

{{quote| "Old Man McKenzie, a frequent patron of the taverns in the Plane of Knowledge, thinks you adventurers have it too easy these days! Back in his day they didn't have all this fancy armor and magical weaponry, they relied on their wits and not a little luck to survive! Think you've got what it takes to survive in McKenzie's Gold era?"}}

{{quote| When I was in the corps, we didn't have any fancy-schmancy tanks. We had STICKS! Two sticks, and a rock for the whole platoon! And we had to ''share'' the rock! So buck up, 'cause you're one lucky Marine.}}

{{quote| '''Antwyn''': Hah? These young'ns call this a final battle? Back in my day, we didn't have these newfangled Asuran magics to protect us from Spectral Agony. We just had to tough it out. Kids these days don't know how good they've got it! <br />

'''Jorith''': I remember the day you had to walk fifteen miles uphill in the Shiverpeaks, then kill a spectral abomination just to get one piece of armor infused! And we liked it that way!<br />

* In ''[[Sinfest]]'', [httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20140209160056/http://sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=3325 Uncle Sam to Slick] -- who—who asks him about the uphill both ways.

* In ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'', [[Retired Badass|General Karl Tagon]] was [http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2012-04-27 talkstalking] about the days before the] [[Casual Interstellar Travel|teraport]], which Kathryn immediately calls out as a cliché.

{{quote| '''Kathryn''': Did you just play the "I walked uphill both ways to school" card?<br />

'''General Tagon''': Bliss Hive's gravity generators were flaky, so they cycled 'em mid-shift. It actually ''was'' uphill both ways. <br />

{{quote| "This never would've happened when I was a boy! You kids these days and your Millennium Items and your [[Card Games]] and your loud music and your hula hoops and your hopscotch and your dungarees and your lollipops and your Sony [[Play StationPlayStation|Playstations]] and your voice-activated light switches and your leather pants and your [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|artificial insemination]]..."}}

{{quote| "...your Blu-Ray Discs and your pierced scrotums and your bull frogs and your telekinesis and your Marvel Comics and your [[YouTube]].com and your nuclear physics and your ingrowing toenails and your [[Gears of War]] and your Quentin Tarentino and your power steering and your elevators and your illegitimate offspring and your... Hey, why did it [[Fade to Black]]? Am I dead?"}}

* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU If Quake was done todytoday]:

{{quote| ''When I was your age, we rocket jumped all the way to school uphill, both ways. IN BOILING LAVA!''}}

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* [[The Simpsons (animation)|Grandpa Simpson]] is fond of these.

{{quote| "Homer, When I was your age, that would be the future, because you're older than me."}}

{{quote| "In my day, we had plenty of fun just throwing rocks at each other."}}

{{quote| "Son, when I was your age, [[Captain Obvious|I was twelve.]]"}}

* Timmy's paternal grandfather in ''[[The Fairly Odd ParentsOddParents]]'' is quite fond of the trope. His first non-flashback line was a rant about how he doesn't like things as how they're today when compared to what they used to be.

** Believe it or not, old people have been complaining about young people for almost three milleniamillennia. If even half of them were right, civilization should have completely decayed by now.

* Variant heard at [[Military Academy|VMI]] from cadets who had previously been enlisted servicemembersservice members: "when I was in Kuwait, we had to walk three times as far to get to the bathroom."