My revisionist thinking would like to believe my generation was better than the current one masking as America’s youth. Of course, I don’t really have to be revisionist, because we had parents who would just as soon smack us across the phase in public than watch us act like neanderthals.
Manners were beaten into us, literally. Wolf down your food at dinner and you were likely to get a dog dish for a plate the next night. Treat someone with disrespect and we’d be treated to a bar of soap in your mouth. Throw a tantrum in public and you’d wish to god your life would end right then and there once your mom said, “just wait until I get you home, mister!”
Today, we indulge our children to the point where they are just a step or two up from neanderthals. I really do think that neyoungerthals is a fitting term for these little monsters, for it would be far more fitting for them to live in caves than in our own homes, or even in our own communities.
I’m sure that sociologists and behaviorists will be studying these little sh**s for generations to come. It’s as if we simply gave up as parents and gave all our kids carte blanche to be self-indulgent, prepubescent little pukes.
I’m sure the germ of this regression lies in those kooks who thought we should give everyone participation trophies for sports, even though a team finished dead last. We piled self-entitlement upon self-entitlement and stroked egos when we should have been dealing out a healthy dose of reality therapy. We have created our own monsters, all because we wanted them to feel good about whoever they were rather than helping them transition into a world filled with often harsh realities.
Of course, it didn’t help that we jumped on the PC bandwagon at the same time. Yes, we do need to be sensitive about the labels we use, but now the neyoungerthals have taken it to a new level, bandying about -ists like there’s no tomorrow.
Everyone seems to be an -ist in our world these days- leftist, racist, apologist, ageist – hell, I can’t even keep track of all the -ists out there these days. It’s like a second language to the neyoungerthals though. Every post on Facebook, every text, every word spoken in school seems to have an angle to it. You can’t even be honest with someone close to you now as you’ll be labeled an -ist, then end up chastised, shunned, beaten and finally, Unfriended.
Yes, Unfriended. This seems to be a big thing to people these days. I don’t think it is to my generation. I have been unfriended many times and in a few instances it took me months to notice. No wonder they weren’t returning my phone calls.
I get it. Admittedly, it used to be simpler in the olden days. We didn’t have all this new-fangled technology where our lives could be posted and paraded 24 hours a day online for all our “friends” to see.
Back in the day, people were more decent about it. They would simply talk about you behind your back and spread rumors on the playground or around the water cooler. Word spread at a snail’s pace about your -ist behavior; so slow, in fact, that people forgot all about it over a long Memorial or Labor Day weekend.
Still, that doesn’t explain the neyoungerthal problem we’re facing. These folks seem to be absolutely clueless about that little thing called life. Oh, sure. There are exceptions. I hear these amazing stories about other’s children who have managed to get a decent job and even move out.
But then I see those terrifying stories about children, neyoungerthals, living with their parents until they are 34. I think they just want to outlast you, hoping you’ll leave the house and maybe even the car in the driveway to them in your will when you finally find a way to get them out of your lives, even if it meant dying.
They just don’t seem to be evolving as quickly as we did back in the day. Sure, we were still kind of infantile when we were in our late teens and even early 20s. Maybe that’s because we didn’t get awards for just showing up for things. We didn’t get a cap and gown or graduation ceremony at the end of kindergarten. Or elementary school. Or middle school. Or…
No, we got one cap and gown. It took us 18 years to get it. Our parents expected it. We earned it. We didn’t get all get a trophy just for showing up to class. We had to get good grades, because if we didn’t, our parents would give us a good paddling or at the very least, take the keys away to the only car the family had.
Today, kids are getting a Mercedes when they turn 18. A used one, granted. But still, a Mercedes, just for turning 18. Me? I got nothing memorable when I turned 18. I did, however, get a Sears electric typewriter as a graduation present. I still can remember that it cost $256.00.
I’m not even sure that covers a month’s insurance premium on the Mercedes these days.
And we wonder why all our kids are turning out as neyoungerthals. We give them trophies for making their first poopy, a cap and gown for making it through preschool, a Mercedes for their birthday and we cap it all off by paying for their college education.
We have created our own monsters. We have set our own evolution back a hundred years or more, churning out a new generation of useless children, children who are supposed to be our future leaders.
It’s days like this that I feel blessed to be on the waning days of life here on this rock. I don’t have to endure another 50 or 60 years of the neyoungerthals and their misplaced entitlement. I get to check out of this crazy place sooner than later. I only hope I get a trophy when it’s time.
In the Emerald City, wondering what we hath wrought, spoiled children, rotten to the core,
-Robb