Used to y would

Te propongo un reading que compara la vida de los jóvenes de hoy con la vida de los jóvenes de antes, que hoy tienen, según el texto, 40 años o más. Este texto me gusta por varias razones; la primera, porque es gracioso y divertido, para que los alumnos veáis que aprender también puede ser muy pero que muy divertido. La segunda, porque nos hace recordar tiempos pasados, cuando no teníamos microondas, cuando no mandábamos emails, cuando teníamos que acudir a la biblioteca más cercana para buscar información sobre algo, etc, etc y etc. Y la tercera razón por la que me gusta el texto es porque sirve para repasar el concepto gramatical de used to y would. Antes de ir al texto, te aconsejo que revises la gramática en el siguiente enlace: used to y would.

Bien, ahora ya puedes leer el texto. Espero que te guste! 🙂

If you are 40 or older you will think this is hilarious!!!! 

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious shit about how hard things were.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of shit like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it! 

But now that… I’m over the ripe old age of forty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.

You’ve got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a UTOPIA! And I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it!

I mean, when I was a kid we didn’t have The Internet. If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves.

There was no email!! We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take, like, a week to get there! Stamps were 5 pence!

Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us. As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to beat all of us! Nowhere was safe!

There were no MP3s or Napsters! If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself!  Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and spoil it all!

You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You had to get walk over to the TV to change the channel! NO REMOTES!!!
There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I’m saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons.
And we didn’t have microwaves; if we wanted to heat something up we had to use the cooker! Imagine that! 
You kids today have got it too easy. You’re spoiled. You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes back in 1970 or before!

Regards,
Grumpy Gang

Bien, si tienes alguna pregunta sobre el texto, no dudes en preguntármela.