You Kids Get Off My Lawn!!!

On my way to work, I have to drive by Saint Raphael’s, my old high school, to reach 95 south.


I was sitting at a red light near the school the other day, marveling at how young they all are. The fact is that the kids who attend that school are always 14-18 years old and I’m the one who keeps getting older. So of course they look younger!


I find “communicating“ with them not too easy. Sometimes I wonder if it should be tried at all. There are absolute, demonstrable differences between the young and old, especially in the our ways of thinking. I sometimes think we have little in common anymore. What’s important to me means little to them and vice versa. I can’t tell you of the latest cool song on KICKS 106 but I can tell you all about why “layering” was important to 70’s music.


At an older age, you’re not amazed by much because you’ve seen it before or; you have been surprised so many times by life you become blasé to weird discoveries. The youths’ world is new and exciting, my world is older and getting more predictable. When you have done something 800,000 times, you tend to know it intimately and yawn at it. Though if you dropped me into some very strange Thailand slum, I’d be quite surprised. But how likely is that going to occur?


*****


I’ve asked others, “Am I turning into my father?” Am I just getting older and becoming what we all turn into…our parents.


A couple of years ago I had a talk with English professor at Rhode Island College who also taught within the Warwick school system. I asked him that same question and he said, “Partially you are because you’re older and we all get “old” the same, but let me tell you, these kids today are that different.”


“They grew up faster and had a very different education than you.” he reminded me.


From what I know of today’s schooling, it’s strictly more genteel than the one I remember. Sink or Swim was the only rule in my schools. I’m not advocating a return to that but I swear there were some decent life’s lessons to be learned from that point of view. You learn to focus on a goal and not give up no matter what. Yeah, it sounds like Navy SEAL training but there are some benefits to that as well. You don’t have to be a showy Drill Sergeant all day long to use it. You learn to balance that drive with your humanity and still keep that command of tenacity when needed.


At a job in healthcare, not my current one but one near Providence College I saw how “soft” some of these kids are. I saw many, who when encountering a problem, just give up. Now the answer to those daily problems didn’t require a degree in Calculus, but just some common sense and a willingness to “walk right through the fire.” But I saw from some a deep willingness to avoid, at all costs, the pain and stress from solving problems, and some of those problems were tiny.


That doesn’t assist independence or any skills towards individuality. If you rely on your peer group the whole time to help you over most obstacles, you remain vulnerable to the day when you are alone and w/o assistance. And that day does come, more than once too.


Ah, don’t mind me…I hear my Dad speaking through me again.