These Kids Today
When I was a lot younger I used to hear the occasional complaint about "These kids today..." and how America was destined to be flushed down the toilet by communist insurgents because of the lack of anything worthwhile coming from my generation. You MAY argue that anything worthwhile has yet to come from my generation all these years later (and you may be entirely correct), but now that I have kids of my own I can assure you to expect even less from our generation of children. I have learned this from my extremely scientific study of listening to my wife complain about other people and their kids. I will therefore declare myself an "expert" on the matter.
When our generation was younger we used to hear absurd stories from our fathers. They'd make up things about walking up-hill both ways in 6 feet of snow to school, changing their own oil, no internet, (and perhaps worst of all) and not being able to shop at a place like Sam's Club or Costco. I used to think that these were huge lies propagated by shell-shocked commie chasers angry that we got out of school for 2 feet of snow, but recent events are leading me to believe that maybe it all wasn't made up (except the part about Sam's Club).
My children live in a school district in Tennessee that calls off school for rain. This is a true story. They are so entirely vigilant about rain prevention that we often get a phone call the day BEFORE it rains informing us that school is cancelled for tomorrow. As a result, the school year extends from early August throughout the next two to five years. I was lead to believe that this is a result of unpaved roads in underdeveloped communities, but my true belief is that the Wicked Witch of the West's grandchildren go to our elementary school, she is on the school board and we're trying to prevent them from melting. So this one singular fact has brought me to the inescapable conclusion that:
We Are Raising a Generation of Sissies
This occurred to me when I realized recently that there is no such thing as Saturday Morning Cartoons anymore. Even worse, instead of meaningful violent cartoons like Tom and Jerry where we learned the appropriate way to beat the honest crap out of each other, our kids are learning Mandarin by watching "Ni Hao, Kai-Lan". They have channels and channels of stuff like this. Now you'd mistakenly think that all this non-violent cartoon learning would contribute something positive to our society, and if you consider alarming increases of teenage pregnancy, soaring high school drop-out rates, Jersey Shore ratings, and the fact that MTV doesn't even broadcast music anymore to be positive, then you'd be correct. I personally am of the opinion that we're setting up the Bicycle Helmet Generation to fail.
The issue (permit me to point out something I believe to be true for a second) is us. We're a fairly non-confrontational lot and the amount of what I call "decision-makers" in our generation is way less than the amount of decision-makers in our parents' generation. We're all to content to let things just happen to us and stand by and do nothing. In fact, when major political, psychological or even social things DO happen to us, we barely even bitch about it anymore.
I urge you to test this out by cutting in front of people in line at your local Wal-Mart. All you have to do is have a lame excuse like "I forgot to feed my hamster, I think he's melting so I need to hurry, sorrythanks!" and I can pretty much assure you that you'll get to keep your place in line. Now, this won't get you home any faster as Wal-Mart has figured out a way to hire people who are actually slow at laser scanners, but it WILL confirm my one proven fact. If you had tried this stunt only 25 years earlier I promise you would have been shot in the face and excommunicated.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for an entire generation of people to suddenly wake up and smell the coffee. I'd much prefer that only the ones that share my personal political, religious and social beliefs do that and would be content to let the rest continue in their "everyone wins something" society, content to have never learned the sport of murder ball because it teaches us to murder(???).
In the meantime, please wake up and show your support by mindlessly and uncontrollably clicking on all of the Google Ad-Sense advertising to the right and left of this article so I can make $0.25 to raise awareness for Tom and Jerry and their True American Values. If you don't contribute, may you find yourself voting for Justin Bieber 25 years from now. I gotta go, my hamster is melting.
-Dave Lumpkin
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