College Kids Have it Easy These Days…or Do They?

I just got back from my 15-year college reunion, and for real, I aged about 50 years in a weekend. You know how our grandparents lived through the inventions of antibiotics, television, bikinis, and computers? And how all that begat the most eye roll-inducing parenting phrase of all time: “You kids have it easy these days. When I was your age…”?

Well, let me tell you, I felt like a freaking 90-year-old shuffling around my old campus last month. It was all I could do to restrain myself from shaking a rolled-up newspaper at coeds and screaming, “You kids and your cell phones and your digital music files and your smug, bearded faces and cheap yet stylish clothing options from H&M! You don’t know what it’s like to struggle in college!”

Seriously, have you seen college kids of today? Where are their cargo pants and stone-washed, high-waisted Gap jeans? How come nobody is wearing chunky-heeled Steve Madden slip-on sandals with poly-blend black slacks? Do they just feel attractive all the time in their on-trend Forever 21 clothes? Have they never known the frustration of trying to feel sexy while dancing to “come on ride that train, hey, ride it, woo woo!” in a fleece vest and turtleneck? Does no one shop at Dillard’s anymore?

Is coordinating a night out with friends a simplistic affair for them that only requires a cell phone? Can they even fathom our late ’90s coordination tactic of just wandering from bar to bar, praying to run into friends? Have they ever felt the world’s greatest joy of organically running into a crush without using any technological means of stalking?

Have they been denied the joy of spending hours in a Tower Records and reading Spin and Rolling Stone to discover their new favorite band? Are their tender fingers not calloused from hitting “stop” and then “play” and “record” simultaneously over and over to assemble mix tapes of their favorite playlists? Have they never felt the sheer elation of the universe coming together for them to record a song perfectly off the radio from start to finish?

Shoot, did they even hand write their college applications, or did those weenies do it all online? Did they ever experience the hassle of visiting their local library’s periodicals section to research colleges? Can they imagine having a school email address 95 characters long or an email system set up in blinking green DOS terminal font?

These kids today have it easy.

You know how much the Toshiba laptop I used in college weighed? SEVEN POUNDS. I thought it was an amazing piece of work and proudly showed everyone my screensavers featuring the Spin Doctors, Jimmy Cliff singing “I Can See Clearly Now,” and Gloria Estefan’s “Live for Loving You” video. I crashed it twice: once after downloading too many South Park cartoons, and another time after trying to watch Pam and Tommy’s boat video (ahem). I have no idea how my parents afforded to fix it, because laptops cost $9,500 back then.

I don’t even know how I chose the university I attended. I’m pretty sure I got tired of looking through magazines and driving to the library for outdated informational books and just chose the college farthest away from Texas. At that time, there was no way of easily searching the Internet for student impressions of schools and courses. Besides, I didn’t get online until my freshman year of college, and even then I only knew how to access a site that sent virtual floral bouquets.

My friends and I also wrote letters to each other on real paper back then. Our letters took forever to write because you had to sum up several weeks of activity and fill in gaps from the last time you wrote. It was like sending letters in the pioneer days. By the time your friend finally received your letter about a major event in your life, like breaking up with a guy or winning an intramural soccer championship, you had already broken your arm and almost died of cholera.

That said, there is not enough money in the world to make me wish we’d had social media and smart phones to record all of our idiotic thoughts and antics back in college. I will take having to do things the hard way over my kids being able to go online and find a 30-year-old photo of me wearing a turtleneck and diaper while throwing up on a Jamaican dance floor at spring break ANY DAY. (That never happened…or did it? The world will never know, because you can’t record things on a pager and a 12-pound phone you have to keep plugged into your car.)

(F.Y.I., future employers and also my mom: That never happened.)