Kids Today

Kids!
I don't know what's wrong with these kids today!
Kids!
Who can understand anything they say?
Kids!
They a disobedient, disrespectful oafs!
Noisy, crazy, dirty, lazy, loafers!
While we're on the subject:
Kids!
You can talk and talk till your face is blue!
Kids!
But they still just do what they want to do!
Why can't they be like we were,
Perfect in every way?
What's the matter with kids today?
Kids!
I've tried to raise him the best I could
Kids! Kids!
Laughing, singing, dancing, grinning, morons!
And while we're on the subject!
Kids! They are just impossible to control!
Kids! With their awful clothes and their rock an' roll!
Why can't they dance like we did
What's wrong with Sammy Caine?
What's the matter with kids today!   ("Kids" from Bye Bye Birdie)

I was thinking about kids now and then (back in the dark ages when we were kids).  When I was young, we used to bicycle to the Detroit Zoo (it was then free to enter, we kids didn't have any money) which is on a very busy highway.  Now a days the kids are not allowed to go anywhere without being driven.  I saw the kid across the street come back from a soccer game in the family van; my poor kids had to bicycle to soccer games which were as close as the neighbor's game was.

We did not have any money and today if you look at the High School parking lot you will see cars, pickups, or vans that are much nicer than our Minivan.  It seems that every kid has a Cell Phone, in the olden days we used Carrier Pigeons (just kidding we had nothing to call home or our buddies).

Some advantages we had, we could get jobs (there is 30-40% unemployment in the 20-30 range thanks to P.O.).  Our teachers seemed to care more about teaching us then keeping Politically Correct speech in the classroom.  We were able to fail (believe or not we actually kept score in sports).  We were able to play baseball or football or etc. without coaches or team uniforms.

(Caveat : my grandkids appear to be raised in the correct (in my opinion) manner).

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told:  "I am with you kid.  Let's go."  ~Maya Angelou


We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.  ~Stacia Tauscher


You can learn many things from children.  How much patience you have, for instance.  ~Franklin P. Jones


A characteristic of the normal child is he doesn't act that way very often


Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music.  ~William Stafford


Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky.  ~Fran Lebowitz



CHILDHOOD, n.  The period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth -- two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age (DD)