History Main / WhenIWasYourAge

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/when_i_was_your_age.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:And we ''liked'' it that way!]]

* ''Series/BlueBloods'': A positive and somewhat subverted example occurs when Nicky manages to convince her mother Erin to let her stay out until 11 PM. In Nicky's defense, Erin's grandfather points out that he was "out on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific at her age!"

* ''Film/{{Interstellar}}'' has an interesting variation where the main character's father-in-law talks about how, back in his day, inventions were being made every day and laments the sterility of the times he lives in and how his son-in-law was born in the wrong era. The twist? The old man is from ''our'' age (possibly TheNewTens), and it is {{justified|Trope}} in that the world in the future is undergoing an agricultural apocalypse, and it has gotten so bad that the Moon Landings being faked is taught at schools to direct more people to working crops.

* Spoofed in a ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'' strip in which Calvin [[ImagineSpot imagines himself]] as Spaceman Spiff being hauled off to a torture chamber by disgusting aliens. Spiff is surprised to find himself in an exact replica of his parents' living room, and one of the aliens announces that Spiff will be subjected to "a calm discussion of wholesome principles." The next panel shows a BigNo from Calvin in the "real world" as his father spouts various StandardFiftiesFather cliches. ("Yes, life is tough and [[MiseryBuildsCharacter suffering builds character]]! Nothing worth having ever comes easy! Virtue is its own reward" - and then the TropeNamer.)

-->'''Cranky:''' Look at all these buttons! Back in MY day, kids were ecstatic if we gave them two of 'em to press! And these colors! We only had [[UsefulNotes/GameBoy four shades of gray in a 2x2 character block]], and we were happy! And we never had any of this fancy 3-D stuff, either! No, we had to survive on what we had! And what little we did have, we were happy with! Look!...look at this!...as I rock, my beard swings! Waste of frames in my opinion! Well, I've never seen anything like it!

-->"This never would've happened when I was a boy! You kids these days and your Millennium Items and your CardGames and your loud music and your hula hoops and your hopscotch and your dungarees and your lollipops and your Sony UsefulNotes/{{PlayStation}}s and your voice-activated light switches and your leather pants and your [[BreadEggsMilkSquick artificial insemination]]..."

-->"...your Blu-Ray Discs and your pierced scrotums and your bull frogs and your telekinesis and your Creator/MarvelComics and your Website/YouTube.com and your nuclear physics and your ingrowing toenails and your ''VideoGame/GearsOfWar'' and your Creator/QuentinTarantino and your power steering and your elevators and your illegitimate offspring and your... Hey, why did it FadeToBlack? Am I dead?"

* ''WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie'': Lord Business's rant to Emmet is [[TakeThat pretty much a copy and paste of editorials complaining about Millennials.]] [[spoiler:"Well guess what. No one ever told me I was special! I never got a trophy just for showing up! I'm not some special little snowflake!"]]

[[folder:Films - Live Action ]]

** In ''Film/BackToTheFuture1'', Lorraine (Marty's mother) chastised Linda (Marty's sister) for thinking that it's okay for girls to call boys, saying "when I was your age I never chased a boy or called a boy or [[AutoErotica sat in a parked car with a boy]]." Then Marty goes back in time and discovers that [[FormerTeenRebel this was a great big lie]].

* In ''[[Literature/ForgottenRealms Cloak of Shadows]]'' Storm tried to inspire young Harpers complaining about having to rise early, then Elminster finished them off with a handful of tall tales:
-->'''Storm''': What sort of Knights and Harpers is Faerun breeding these days? Why, when I was your age...\\
'''Sharantyr''': I know, I know. [...] Then you had to run two miles to the river to bathe and draw enough water for all the horses to drink, run back with it, and get the axe to go out and chop firewood for the kitchen fires, before y--\\
'''Elminster''': When I was your age, axes hadn't been invented yet. Nor horses. We ''walked'' everywhere to gather our firewood.
* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''

** Granny Weatherwax often does it when dealing with younger witches. In ''Literature/EqualRites'', when confronted with a crystal ball, she mutters "Never could get the hang of this damn silicon stuff. A bowl of water with a drop of ink was good enough when I was a girl." And in ''Literature/WyrdSisters'' her reaction to Magrat's New Age fripperies is "When ''I'' was a gel we had a lump of wax and a couple of pins and we had to be content. We had to make our ''own'' enchantment in them days." And in ''Literature/WitchesAbroad'', when she learns of a shortage of young girls who want to be witches, she blames it on "all this making your own entertainment. We never made our own entertainment when I was a girl. We never had time."
** In ''Literature/TheLastContinent'' this is one of many ways the older wizards drive Ponder Stibbons mad. When unfocused time magic turns ''him'' into an old man, he's horrified to realise he wants to say "You should've seen the temporal disturbances we [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble will have been used to be going to get]] in ''my'' day."

--->'''Mrs Cosmopolite''': Bored! How can you be bored? I was never bored at your age.\\
And, indeed, a browse through Mrs C's diaries from the years when she was your age [[FormerTeenRebel show this to be true]].\\

'''Mrs Cosmopolite''': When I was your age I had to walk ten miles through the snow, uphill, by myself, every day, to go to school.\\
'''The Seeker''': Did you really live less than a day's journey from a school?
* Both averted and played straight in ''Literature/GoneWithTheWind'', Scarlett is frantic about her finances and tells Rhett she wants to make money so her children, Wade and Ella, won’t have to scrimp like she had to after the War. Rhett replies that some hardship toughens people up. However, after his and Scarlett’s daughter, Bonnie, is born, he wants to make her path smooth. Rhett was always fond of Scarlett’s children, but things seemed a lot different once he had a child of his own.
* In the ''Literature/WarriorCats'' series, an elder does this at a Gathering in ''Forest of Secrets'', claiming that young cats nowadays don't know what hardship is.
* Played with by Creator/ShelSilverstein in his poem "When I Was Your Age".
-->''My uncle said, "How old are you?"\\
I said, "Nine and a half," and then\\
My uncle puffed out his chest and said,\\
"When I was your age, I was ten."''

--> '''Principal:''' When I was a student here we ''knew'' how to behave. Would you like to know how we were punished for fighting back then?
--> '''Ben:''' Wow, that would have been a ''long'' time ago. Did they put you in the stockade? They used that a lot in Colonial America.
--> '''Principal:''' What did you just say?
--> '''Ben:''' That you're old. Was I being too subtle for you?

[[folder:Web Original]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}} (1993)'': In [[Recap/AnimaniacsEpisode44 Episode 44]], one of the useless facts Yakko tells the viewers is that termites can live to be 50 years old. He then sees an elderly termite telling his grandchildren, "Why, when I was a young termite, we used to have to walk 50 miles in the snow with no shoes for a good piece of wood. Not like you kids today!"
* ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyond'': A variation shows up after Bruce shuts down the cave's high-tech systems to keep out [[AIIsACrapshoot a hostile AI]]:

''(he points to a big steel door with a manual winch)''\\

%%* ComicBook/TheJoker used this trope in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanBeyondReturnOfTheJoker''.
%%* ''WesternAnimation/BillAndTedsExcellentAdventures'' used this with Ted's father.
* ''WesternAnimation/CodenameKidsNextDoor'': The episode "Operation: S.P.A.N.K.E.N.S.T.I.N.E." has Numbuh Two's grandmother Lydia and Count Spankulot ramble on how they had to eat things like packing peanuts and tadpoles for dessert when they were younger.
* ''WesternAnimation/DarkwingDuck'': In one episode, Goslyn claimed that Darkwing once pulled that - right after he pointed out a building as his childhood school... and the house next door as his childhood home. Then again, over the course of the series, Darkwing clearly demonstrates MultipleChoicePast, at least one of which involved Drake obviously making stuff up on the spot.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddparents'': Timmy's paternal grandfather is quite fond of the trope. His first non-flashback line was a rant about how he doesn't like things as how they're today when compared to what they used to be.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Franklin}}'': When Franklin first went to school, he was told that his father, instead of taking a bus, had to walk two and half miles to school and back, even in the rain and the snow. His parents didn't go so far as "uphill both ways," though.
* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': In "The Love God", after Grunkle Stan's crappy home-made hot air balloon crashes into the Woodstick festival and causes chaos, Stan remarks "What's everyone crying about? In my day, zeppelins fell from the sky like raindrops!"

* ''WesternAnimation/JorelsBrother'': {{Parodied|Trope}}. Mr. Edson once tells his son, Jorel's brother, that [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment when he was his age, he was also eight.]]
* ''WesternAnimation/LooneyTunes'': In "[[WesternAnimation/NormanNormal1968 Norman Normal]]", Norman goes to his father for help dealing with a moral dilemma, but Norman's dad just rambles about how as a kid he had to walk ten miles through blinding snow to a one-room schoolhouse, and how he struggled to find work after college during the Great Depression.

* ''WesternAnimation/Rugrats1991'' had Tommy's Grandpa Lou and his stories, frequently invoking and emphasizing "fifteen [something]" in them. It got to the point where others in the family would have retorts ready:
** His son Stu, in ''[[Recap/RugratsS2E10ReptarOnIceFamilyFeud Reptar on Ice]]'':
-->'''Lou:''' In my day dinosaurs didn't skate around with a bunch of ninnies in tights!\\
'''Stu:''' [[HistoricalLongevityJoke In his day the dinosaurs were]] ''[[HistoricalLongevityJoke REAL]].''

-->'''Lou''': In my day, we had no use for antiques.\\
'''Didi''': But, Pop, I thought in ''your'' day, there ''were'' no antiques.
** Tommy's other grandfather, Didi's father Boris in "[[Recap/RugratsS2E9NoBonesAboutItBeachBlanketBabies Beach Blanket Babies]]":
-->'''Lou:''' In my day, we had plenty of fun just throwing rocks at each other.
-->'''Boris:''' Well, I have a tale for ''you'', Mr. Fifteen Years! 52 Pickup! [flicks a deck of cards at him]
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'':
** Grandpa Abe Simpson is fond of these. There's a bit of a subversion of it in "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy" when he complains about how when he was a kid toys were built to last, while modern ones break "as soon as they come out of the box". He tries demonstrating, but actually has to put in a lot of strenuous effort to damage the toy.
** Another episode played with this, where Homer's friend Carl has a chat with him.
--> "Homer, When I was your age, that would be the future, because you're older than me."
** Homer puts a twist on it in "Marge Be Not Proud", when Bart is begging him and Marge to get him a new video game and they don't feel like spending the money:
-->"When I was your age, I wanted an electric football game more than anything in the world. And my parents bought it for me, and it was the happiest day of my life."
** This example from season two's "Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish" encapsulates the spirit of early-era ''The Simpsons'':
--> '''Reporter:''' What's your name, son?
--> '''Bart:''' I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you?
--> '''Reporter:''' I'm Dave Shutton. I'm an investigative reporter who's on the road a lot and, uh, I must say that in my day, we didn't talk that way to our elders.
--> '''Bart:''' Well, this is my day, and we do, sir.
** In "Three Men and a Comic Book", Bart complains to Homer that he only earned 50 cents doing Mrs. Glick's gardening:
--> '''Homer:''' Hey, when I was your age, 50 cents was a lot of money.
--> '''Bart:''' Really?
--> '''Homer:''' Nah.
* ''WesternAnimation/StaticShock'': In the third season finale, Blast From the Past, Static ends up teaming up with Soul Power, a retired ElectricBlackGuy superhero who was active in the 60s. He constantly talks about how much better things were "back in my day", much to Static's annoyance: cars were faster, supervillains had more style, girls were- whatever they were, Static [[TooMuchInformation interrupts him]] before he can finish.
* ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'': This was parodied in an episode, which went something like this:
-->"Son, when I was your age, [[CaptainObvious I was twelve]]."
* ''WesternAnimation/JimmyTwoShoes'': one had Lucius noting, that when he was Beezy's age, he was more productive...[[KickTheDog at spreading misery]].

* ''WesternAnimation/TheXs'': "You know, when I was your age, [[CaptainObvious I was younger]]."