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athelindFrom Bill Cosby's epic routine on parents and grandparents:
My father walked to school, 4 o'clock every morning, with no shoes on -- uphill. Both ways! In five feet of snow. And he was thankful.
(Jump to 1m57s.)
Used to indicate how tough things were when the speaker was a kid, acknowledging that there might just be some humorous exaggeration for effect. Also used in response to a speaker who's ranting about that topic, as a curt dismissal: "Yeah, yeah, we know. Uphill. Both ways."
More than the moon landing, more than the Nixon resignation -- this was the defining moment of my generation. Every Baby Boomer and the early batch of Generation X has heard this routine, and knows this phrase, even if they can't place the source.
And yes, heard it, not "seen" it: back in those days, we didn't have your YouTubes or your DVDs or your Comedy Centrals. We had to get our comedy on LPs -- big, black hunks of vinyl with sound physically etched into it that you had to play back with a needle, a real, physical needle, not a beam of light.
Analog. None of this fancy "digital MP3" mumbo jumbo.
If we couldn't get our hands on a comedy LP, we might make scratchy, bootleg tape recordings off the radio -- if we were lucky enough to have an FM station that carried The Doctor Demento Shows for a couple of hours, once a week.
Most of us just had AM radios that played disco and elevator music.
And we were thankful for them!
(Jump to 1m57s.)
Used to indicate how tough things were when the speaker was a kid, acknowledging that there might just be some humorous exaggeration for effect. Also used in response to a speaker who's ranting about that topic, as a curt dismissal: "Yeah, yeah, we know. Uphill. Both ways."
More than the moon landing, more than the Nixon resignation -- this was the defining moment of my generation. Every Baby Boomer and the early batch of Generation X has heard this routine, and knows this phrase, even if they can't place the source.
And yes, heard it, not "seen" it: back in those days, we didn't have your YouTubes or your DVDs or your Comedy Centrals. We had to get our comedy on LPs -- big, black hunks of vinyl with sound physically etched into it that you had to play back with a needle, a real, physical needle, not a beam of light.
Analog. None of this fancy "digital MP3" mumbo jumbo.
If we couldn't get our hands on a comedy LP, we might make scratchy, bootleg tape recordings off the radio -- if we were lucky enough to have an FM station that carried The Doctor Demento Shows for a couple of hours, once a week.
Most of us just had AM radios that played disco and elevator music.
And we were thankful for them!
