Monday, March 19, 2007

Not in my day

Usually when an old curmudgeon like myself notes how the younger generation is going to Hell in a handbag, we are told that old fogies have been saying that for thousands of years, and a quote by Aristotle is brought up to demonstrate it. I still say what’s going on today is different from what went on in my day.

OK, perhaps I was a bit backwards not having had my first kiss yet by the 6th grade- but even the most forward of my classmates weren’t having sex during computer lab, as recently occurred in a local school. I can’t even decide which is the most important of reasons why this could not have happened when I was 12 years old.

Did you have a party for your 15th birthday? In my day such a party would have broken up and all gone home by 10:00- but this past weekend one 15 year old girl’s party here in town had a fight break out around 1:00 a.m., that ended up as a three car running firefight that left two dead . Again, I can’t even begin to state on how many levels that is wrong.

Now, I will admit that occasionally after a high school ball game a fight would occur... but I sure don’t remember it becoming a major riot that could tie up Times Square, with a subway firefight as happened Sunday . We’ve gotten used to the idea that winning an NBA championship requires a riot afterward; (I got some “what rubes” type ribbing from friends over the fact that Indianapolis had a polite Dome Rally after winning the Super Bowl), but for a high school game? What’s next- will shots be exchanged following a foul during the “hokey pokey” in kindergarten?

3 comments:

Chalicechick said...

((OK, perhaps I was a bit backwards not having had my first kiss yet by the 6th grade- but even the most forward of my classmates weren’t having sex during computer lab, as recently occurred in a local school. I can’t even decide which is the most important of reasons why this could not have happened when I was 12 years old.)))

A 12-year-old HAD been caught having sex in a room at your school, do you think you necessarily would have heard about it?

As for the rest, one could argue that your generation rioted over more important things, but to me the underlying point is there were still riots and people still died.

I'll give you the birthday party.

CC

Joel Monka said...

OK, you got me- my generation would riot at the drop of a hat- but it was generally the privelege of college age kids; high schoolers were normally still afraid of teachers and parents.

The deal with the sex in school incident was that they DIDN'T get caught; it was public sex, during class time, and the teacher was the only one who didn't know it was happening. It took the school two months to hear about it and get one of the kids to admit it. The fact that the teacher had so little control of his class that it was possible was why it became a local scandal. So yeah, I'd have heard.

LaReinaCobre said...

I don't know if these things were happening when you were young, but if they had been, it's unlikely that you would have heard about it unless it happened in your school or town. Today we we hear news from all over the country and the world, even when it has no real relevance to our lives or communities.