Friday, September 6, 2013

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.


12 comments:

  1. i heard about this today but had not seen it.
    one has to imagine she's fine. or burnt to a
    crisp.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I couldn't agree more. I grew up in a house full of guns. Did I kill myself or anyone else? I never wore a helmut even when I rode a motorcycle at high speed. I climbed monkey bars with concrete underneath. We played Eval Knievel in the back yard.

    It just happens that the Gen Xers are the ones who started this helmut, knee pad, only ride where I can see you or you'll wind up on a milk carton bullshit! And those parents had a point but it's crippled a generation. The, "Don't talk to strangers" thing is also baffling as well. I talk to hundreds of strangers everyday. The point is to teach them the difference between a good stranger and a bad one.

    Honestly, I don't have anything in common with the guys at a bar under the age of 30. They're insipid, entitled and addelpated.

    Where's my trophy?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Everybody wants to be a pole dancer, but not everybody is willing to set herself on fire to achieve her dreams. You go girl.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are wise. Go to her. Take a fire extinguisher.

      Delete
  4. There’s a big TV campaign here in Canada regarding this topic.

    If you had told me when I was a child that getting kids to play actively would someday be a chore, I wouldn’t have believed you.

    We played outdoors in groups, or alone if we felt like it, until it got dark and then, and only then, did we come indoors.

    And I wouldn’t exchange my childhood for any modern kid’s life today.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow.
    Stupid is as stupid does.
    And what a waste of tequila!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think we have the same mother.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I will count every blessing I can conceive that I made most of my more embarrassing mistakes before the days of omnipresent video documentation.

    I'm in my early thirties, but raised by my depression era grandparents who were hands off to say the least. They never raised their own children --that was left to the various nannies and governesses they employed from post to post all over southeast Asia-- so when one of their daughters dumped me on their doorstep, they raised me the way their parents raised them, which was for good or ill, to treat me like a small adult.

    I learned early if I wanted to be treated like I was special, I had to actually be special and being visible was not an acceptable substitute for being interesting.

    The worst part is I'm friends with a bunch of women a decade or so older than I am with teenage children.

    The mothers are constantly wringing their hands asking "How, HOW, did they get such a sense of entitlement?!" and it takes every ounce of self-control I have to bite my tongue until blood pours out my nose instead of casually mentioning that just perhaps, the fact they've been coddled and attended to like little gilded dauphins since they first whined themselves out of the egg might have something to do with it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We're were in a restaurant and the group at the next table, four women and two children that apparently belonged to one of the women. The children were in constant motion, it was like watching baby chimps with blond hair and blue eyes. Spencer and Abbey were either climbing over their mother, playing under the table, or running amuck. All the while the mother was trying to talk to her girlfriends. Finally the kids made it to our table and before I could guide them back o their table, their mother came over and said I'm sorry, but they normally aren't like this."

      Oh, yes they were. She was just so used putting up with it and saying that they normally aren't like this that she understood that these kids are always out of control.

      Makes me glad we have dogs.

      Delete
  8. BRILLIANT. This generation are a bunch of little pussies. They are evolving with less and less brain cells hence their enjoyment of rap / hip-hop which is only two notes with someone asshole in a monotone voice citing "poetry" ... They obviously did not have a Mexican mother. My mom could throw a brush and make it round a corner until it beamed you right in the head. Now THAT'S a mother to be proud of.

    XOXO
    Deb

    ReplyDelete
  9. Amen. Preach sister, preach. I am managing these folks in the workplace and it is scary. The level of detailed instruction required is mind numbing. If they aren't briefed on all possible contingencies and something unexpected occurs, then it is "not fair". Also, they have no problem solving skills becuase they've never had to solve a problem themselves. Additionally, if I have to deliver constructive criticism to redirect one of these cry babies, I have to take a valium beforehand just so that I can tolerate the whining or passive aggressive reaction that I get.

    ReplyDelete