If Adam and Eve had ever been teenagers, I think that when their children were teenagers, they would have been saying something closely resembling, “Kids these days!”
I am pretty sure that by the time they had grandchildren who were teenagers, their children were saying it. I assume this because all of the over-35 crowds that I have ever known have used some phrase or other about “kids these days!”
I’ve even found phrases resembling it in books that are hundreds of years old and originating in different countries. It must be a common thought throughout the ages of man.
My observations about kids these days are, in some ways, very similar to those of many of the other people I have heard comment about the subject. Some of them would include that the language of the kids these days is coarser than it was when I was a kid, which is what my parents’ generation said about the kids my age. No one my age would have been caught dead in some of the clothes that the kids these days wear to school. And I totally do not get the tattoo thing.
I want any young people that read this to realize that the tattoo thing as well as any criminal activity and consequences of sexual promiscuity are things you can’t take back. I will always discourage those.
Now I would like to share some other observations about kids these days.
The same straight-forwardness that makes for some of their coarse language lets them tell everyone in their little friend circle to shut up for a minute while they call across the bleachers to someone sitting alone to “get over here and hang with us.”
It makes them able to ask the bald lady at the football game whether or not she would like them to shave their heads so that they can support her in her cancer fight, and whether she is expecting to live through it, and if they can come over and do her dishes or something, and whether they can wear pink for her on the football field.
It makes them able to ask bold questions and admit to very human thoughts that the adults around them can help them figure out how to deal with, because they are open about it, which would have been absolutely shocking when I was a kid.
The same lack of self-consciousness that lets them wear outrageous things to school lets them be very openly kind and encouraging and even truly ‘hang-out’ friends with the elderly, the sick, and those with severe limits. It lets them boldly go where few from my generation dared to go.
I hope they will avoid those big things they can’t take back, but I have something else I want to say to and about kids these days.
Way to go! Keep up the good work! And, I love you guys.
