11 Nostalgic Activities Today's Kids Will Never Experience

Kids will never know the satisfaction of putting a cassette in your stereo and waiting for your favorite song to come on, fingers anxiously waiting on the record button. A message to today's children: mixes weren't always made by iTunes based on MATH. We had to work for these. 

So you've got your mix tape and you invite your friends over. You announce "Check out this new Naughty By Nature song I recorded from Hot 97," only to press play and hear the worst possible noise. No, I'm not talking about the verse that Vinny raps (that's some Naughty By Nature humor for you). The sound your stereo makes when it eats your tape. The only way to fix it? A pen and tons of patience. 

Has there ever been official proof that this even worked? We can all agree that we all looked like idiots treating Excite Bike like a harmonica, right? No big deal. What I wouldn't give to still be huffing that Contra cartridge. 

Then again, I certainly do not miss that friend who would use his lips while blowing on the game. When he came over, he'd be all "I'll fix this" anytime the game froze, only to mouth-rape Mega Man with every slobbery blow.  

There was once a day where we did not have an "info" button on our remote controls. Instead, we watched the beginning and tried to guess what movie it was. And when we finally realized it was not Major League 2, we would consult our TV Guides. And if we couldn't find it, we would FREAK THE FUCK OUT and blame our siblings for losing it.  Yeah, shit was hard back then. And it made us stronger.

"Heeeoooooooooo Heeeeeoooooooo RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR" - The sound you make when impersonating a modem. Goldblum knew the deal. 

To be honest with you, I'd be surprised if kids even knew how to hold pencils. Everything's on their texting machines and porn boxes these days. But years ago, when we wanted to look professional, we wrote in cursive. And when we forgot how to write a lower case "f," we just scribbled a print "f" and connected it to the next letter, praying nobody noticed. It was a way of life.  

Anybody with a beeper deserved to be mocked. There were a variety of cruel ways to mess with these poor saps, but my personal favorite involved calling said beeper-wearer and leaving the phone number of the girl he had a crush on. The ideal time for this was obviously late at night, when he would undoubtedly rush to the nearest pay phone and call, only to wake up her parents. Never. Got. Old. 

Speaking of pay phones...yikes. I don't miss these at all. Kids are lucky they no longer have to rely on owning quarters to make urgent phone calls. Though, they do miss out on freaking out squares by dialing a special number and hanging up twice. Yes, that's how you made pay phones ring on their own. Now you know. 

Granted, I haven't been to a school library in years (and it'd be weird if just for the sake of this nostalgia-fest, I just started showing up at schools and inspected the facilities), but I'm guessing most have fully functioning computers filled with high speed internet and tons of RAM. The latter I assume is something every modern child is familiar with and they trade RAM on the playground like it were pogs. "It's Alf. He's back. In RAM form." Anyway, the point is, our computers couldn't do ANYTHING other than give you the opportunity to play the least educational game ever. Kids will never know the satisfaction of Mary getting dysentery and shooting 800 pounds of buffalo, only to…well you know.  

So many options, so little actually availble on the internet yet. I was an Infoseek guy, myself. Buuuuut a lot of people will stand by Dogpile and Alta Vista. But those people were idiots. Infoseek was the way to go. Go ahead, Google it. You'll see.