Remember how we'd roll our eyes and laugh when our parents/grandparents used to look at us and say, "We didn't get all these toys in my day."
"It was just a penny and a satsuma in Christmas stockings in my day."
"In my day, if I spoke like that to my mother I'd be horse-whipped" (I kid you not, my Grandad used to say that to me - like I should be grateful I wasn't being publicly flogged on a daily basis).
Well now it's my turn.
And there's plenty to say about why my sons have it so much better than in my day (clears throat and pulls self up to full height on zimmer frame).
TV on demand
I remember begging my mum to buy a video recorder so we could watch ET in the comfort of our front room.
My best friend had one (can't remember if it was VHS or Betamax) and was the envy of our entire school because the movie we all marvelled at in the cinema was something she could watch any time she wanted.
It was an unbelievable luxury, to be able to do that. Or to record something on TV and watch it any time we wanted (my mum always decided to do the grocery shop when Top of the Pops was on).
Fast forward 30 years and we have a vast collection of DVDs, we have movies downloaded onto laptops, on Mr G's iPad, and we're members of LoveFilm, so if a movie comes out the kids would like to see, we can order it to arrive by post within a couple of days.
Blake wants to see Scooby Doo and here's how the conversation goes in our house...
Me: Which one?
Blake: shrugs
Me: Pirates Ahoy?
Blake: No
Me: Where's my Mummy?
Blake: No
Me: Spooky Games?
Blake: No
Me: Monsters Unleashed?
Blake: No
Me: PIIIIIIIIICK ONE
Blake: Errrrrr...... Haunted Island
Me: switches on chosen movie and stalks out of room, muttering "In my day....."
Flavoured medicine
When I was little and I got sick, my mum would shovel this disgusting thick gloop onto a spoon and come at me, ready to pin me down if necessary to make me take it (and that was often necessary).
Or for the flu she'd mix up a "hot toddy" - whisky with hot water and sugar - something I wouldn't mind so much now, but as a kid whisky really tastes foul!
I would have rather struggled into school, bleeding from my eyeballs, than have that experience too often.
My kids don't know how lucky they are, now their medicines comes in strawberry, orange and even peppermint flavours.
In fact, sometimes I think the 'sore tummy' they complain of before they go to sleep is just invented so they can get their Calpol fix.
Googling homework
It takes seconds to Google anything you want to know. Information at your fingertips.
And this is where I sound like a dinosaur, explaining to my boys that there was no internet when I was a girl.
If you got stuck on something for your Geography homework, you had two choices - pray someone in your family knew the answer, or hike to the library and spend hours looking for a book with the information you needed.
I couldn't Ask Jeeves. I bloody wish.
Mum's taxi
We're all so protective of our kids these days, we don't let them go anywhere on their own.
Play date? Nipping to the shop for ice-cream? After-school sports club?
You should see the boys' faces when I suggest we actually walk somewhere!
No siree, they buckle up in the car and wait for their chauffeur.... me.
(Cue music from the Hovis advert.)
In my day, I went to a middle school about three miles away from my village, from the age of nine.
My mum gave me my bus fare and pushed me out the door on Monday morning.
Along with aboutfive friends, I had to catch public transport. There was no dedicated school bus service. And no parents offered to take us.
We often missed our bus home and had to walk. Nobody worried or sent out a search party for us.
They just knew we'd be home by tea time.
We had to walk butt naked through forty miles of snow.
Worked in the coal mine twenty two hours a day for just half a cent,
Had to sell my internal organs just to pay the rent!"
-When I Was Your Age, Weird Al YankovicWhat aspects of childhood do you think is so much easier than in your day?
Donna is a Geordie lass, married to a Lancashire lad, and mum to two lively boys who were born in Jersey - now all living in Scotland. Confused? Don't worry. So is she most of the time!
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