In My Day

I was looking for a joke to illustrate humor in my column and came across these from a contest run by the Washington Post:

The Washington Post Report from Week 228, in which you were asked to tell Gen-Xers how much harder you had it in the old days:

Second Runner-Up:

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)

First Runner-Up:

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)