When things go wrong, sometimes you no one but yourself to blame

I often say, that unlike previous generations that were going to Hell in a handbasket before us, that kids today (and that includes anyone up to 25 years old) will be the destruction of society.

NOW when I was a kid, you didn't have play dates, you just found kids to play with (after their parents were vetted by your parents) and you played after school.  Or you got on a bike without all manner of safety gear.  It was expected that at some point your mother would shoo you out the door and there you were.  You either made the best of it, or you spent the afternoon with your face pressed against the window staring at you mother, in her valium induced haze, smoking cigarettes and watching Phil Donohue.

For those of us who took to our bikes, you roamed with your friends.  You made up games.  You learned to abide by the rules.  You learned to get along with people.

And your reward?

Your parents let in the door at dinner time and you got a meal to eat, a TV to watch and a bed to sleep in along with the promise of another day to go out and do it all again.  

If you got injured, you learned from it, hopefully, and you didn't make the same mistake twice.

If you didn't make it home, you became the stuff of parental stories.  Yes, it was a tragedy to be sure.  But your example, running with scissors - or the even more deadly "running down the sidewalk with a Brach's Sour Ball in your mouth, and you tripped and it got lodged in your throat and thats why children should eat the candy in the bowl on Nana's coffee table -  was then drilled into the heads of other kids and they survived by learning from what you did, or didn't do.

Today, parents do everything for their children.  They set up playdates.  They teach them to be fair to everyone.  They ignore their kids.  They hold up in the master suite getaways while failing to watch their children and correct their childish behaviors.  Parents do not eat with their kids because none of them can say to their bosses "I really have to leave now because I have to make dinner."

Today, the first prize winner in a contest not only gets an award, BUT EVERYONE who shows up gets also gets an award.

So kids have no structure, and they don't learn what adults understand: If you are stupid you are bound to suffer.

We live in a world where everyone is special, and that makes the special people, not so special.

And this is how we come to the video in this post.  But don't watch it quite yet.  Look at the girl, and look at the coffee table.  She is upside down in front of a door - this can't end well.  And on the coffee table are more candles than most catholic churches have.  A bottle of Tequila, some limes and a shot glass. So we know that this young lady who probably isn't 21 is already drinking alone. Her next stop should be Betty Ford.

But no, she's feeling good, and she headed someplace else:



This is what happens when you make children wear bicycle helmets - they are protected from themselves.  In the good old days, you didn't have camera phones or yoga pants.  You didn't have "twerking" and children didn't feel the need to act like tramps or lazy assholes.  No one would have tried something this magnificently stupid because someone's dress uniform from Catholic School would have fallen and exposed her panties.

You see kids like the young lady on the video wouldn't have made it this far in life, and I blame bicycle helmets.  If it weren't for the safety belt of society that embraced her in the days up until this video was made, destiny would have taken her out before it got to this.

I do hope, whoever she is, that she was not hurt, and if you was, she was able to heal.  I also hope she learned a basic lesson that most children used to learn before they were old enough for school.  Do not play around doors.  One is bound to open and someone is bound to get hurt.  And here, in this video is proof of that.