ImPerceptibility

Posts Tagged ‘good ol’ days’

Last night there was a story on the news. A teenage boy was riding his bike and he was attacked by two other boys. He died at the hospital shortly after. It was sad. I felt bad for everyone involved. Then they had the shock and disbelief interviews with the community. Scared and upset neighbors looked frightened and expressed their sorrow for the family. Then a man my age come on the screen and he said it. It being the catch phrase that makes me see red. The one that cancels out any feelings of sorrow and replaces them with anger.

“I just don’t know what to say. I grew up in the 70′s and things like this didn’t happen.”

I sat straight up on the couch and shouted, “Bullshit!”

MyHusband startled awake from his pre-bed nodding off and looked around wildly trying to figure out what he’d done.

Back in the good old days things like that didn’t happen. It makes me angry every time I hear it. Yes, it did happen. Believe it or not teenage boys have been fighting since the beginning of time and sometimes people get hurt. When I grew up people were killed, and there were gangs, and children were molested, and girls got pregnant, and we dressed like idiots, and we listened to inappropriate music, and we drank and did drugs, and…

I’ve tried for some time to figure out why it makes me so mad. It’s very complicated and it bothers me in many different ways. I’m still trying to figure it out so I decided to make a list

1. “It wasn’t like that when I was kid.” The person that says something like that is in denial. Instead of facing the problem they are hiding behind a wall.
2. It stops any legitimate conversations so people can glorify an idealized lie. People, the past has gone. Lets talk about the here and now. Lets make plans for the future.
3. They incorrectly attribute moral superiority to an entire decade instead of the people that lived in it.“Ohh yeah, I grew up in a little slice of heaven. Back then everyone always did what was right because that’s the way it was.” Whatever.
4. The difference between my childhood and my children’s childhood is in the good ol’ days no one knew the guy down road went to jail because he liked little boys. Knowing and talking about a problem doesn’t make the problem worse. It just make it visible and that makes it seem scarier. In reality it makes the world safer.
5. You aren’t accepting responsibility. “They” are the problem. No, they are children and they are responding to the world that we have built for them. If they are messed up then you need to point your finger at yourself.
6. It makes it seem like my children, your children, and all the wonderful little people I have cared for over the past years are screwed. That they are inheriting a world that’s devoid of goodness.

Number five makes me mad but I think number six may be the largest source of my anger because it is the ultimate bullshit. Anyone that thinks the kids that are growing up today are any less wonderful than past generations haven’t spent much time with the kids. Or if they have, they have been judging them on outdated standards and viewing the world through mass media blinders.

As a whole these kids are amazing. They are so intelligent and have a world view that is so much larger than we could have ever hoped to have had. If we’d stop harming them with all our doomsday prophecising and give them tools so they can succeed instead of assaulting the character of an entire generation because we’re afraid, they’ll do amazing things. Actually, I think they’ll do amazing things either way. You just wait and see.