Kids today...

Kids today, eh?

You know, there's many, many cool things that kids have today that hadn't been invented when I was a kid, or were so overpriced that they couldn't be bought by anyone with a reasonable pocket money allowance. And in almost every instance, I don't wish they had been around or affordable when I was a kid.

It was fine growing up with only 3 channels on the telly (OK, so there were 4 by the time I was 12, but...), no video or DVD (I never had a VCR until I was a student), no iPods, no mobile phones, no handheld games consoles (apart from the occasional space invaders or pacman), no internet (i.e. no hotmail, msn, skype, bebo.com, etc.), and so on. I was even in that unfortunate generation that was slightly too young for skateboards when they were first popular and slightly too old for them when their popularity returned a decade or so later. But I had a great childhood. There's nothing kids have today that I would have wanted back then... except Heelys.

Why, oh why, were these not invented when I was eight? I would have loved a pair of them! I could have coasted around the streets pretending I was one of 'Bailey's Comets' (sorry if that reference was lost on anyone under the age of 35, it was a cartoon in the early 70s). How cool would that have been? Sigh.