Times Have Changed

There is only one generation other than Baby Boomers who have seen more changes in their life. Those are members of the Greatest Generation. Unfortunately, very few of these remain since they would now be in their nineties or over a hundred.

A quick poll from my friends shows that none of them have parents who are still on the green side of the grass.

Those few, like my parents if they were still around, saw changes that went from no phones, to party lines, to wall phones, and later to cell phones. My Mom, rest her soul, had a crippled hand but made herself learn to use a phone and laptop to send and receive messages. Mother often related text messages to Western Union and telegrams.

This got me to thinking about how so many things changed for us, through the years. Some changes were gradual and subtle. Other changes made us think to this day: “What took those changes so long to be instituted?”

Here are a few:

At football practice, coaches preached to us that water during practice made us “weak.” We would go through 3-hour practices that would bring grown men to their knees WITHOUT a single drop of water. When we stumbled up the hill to the locker room, we drank like a dromedary camel. To make matters worse, if we had cramps, we were given a handful of salt tablets. I have one question: how did we keep from dying from heat exhaustion or a heat stroke? To my knowledge, no one died.

Speaking of football, we were taught to tackle by leading with our facemask through the ball carrier. Later, it was determined that this was not the “perfect” tackling technique but the perfect technique for a neck and head injury. Again, by the Grace ofGod, no one died or was paralyzed.

Throughout my elementary, junior high and high school days, I NEVER attended school with a female who wore anything but dresses to school. No shorts, jeans, cutoffs, peddle pushers or pantsuits. Dresses. End of story. If there was a decision about the length (code for short), the female culprit had to go to the counselor’s office, get on her knees and check the length of her dress. The counselor was the prosecutor, judge and jury. There was no rebuttal or appeal. Why would a dress, 2 inches above the knees, disrupt learning. Heaven forbids IF a well-intentioned girl wore jeans to school. Many of the miniskirts left little to the imagination.

I am totally convinced that the reason so many of us who have an extra layer around our midsection is for one reason: we had to CLEAN our plates before we were allowed o get up from the table. Like many of you, we had a certain mantra: Get all you want; eat all you get. I sat for hours staring at that extra helping of corn that seemed to grow, the longer we looked at it. Hiding it under the cornbread or slipping it to the family dog never worked out.

In the fifties and sixties, in ALL our classes, there might have been a total of 3 classmates, who would today be classified as obese. Looking at today’s youth, there might be 3 in a class who AREN” T overweight. What changed?

My answer: too little exercise. Added fats, carbs and fast foods which are loaded with chemicals which would bring a government mule to its knees.

Check out this change: in our day, parents had to BEG us to come in and get ready for supper with the rest of the family. Today, parents BEG kids to get OUT of the house and get some sunshine instead of lying on the couch and playing video games. Parents today are guilty of the eleventh commandment “Thou shalt not use electronic devices as a baby sitter.”

This change hits me harder than any of the others: young folks today are finally learning that a college degree does NOT guarantee a good paying job, a 401k, benefits and a pension plan that can’t be outlived.

So many youngsters are learning skills through technical schools. That enables them to graduate with ZERO STUDENT debt and multiple careerpaths with great benefits. Employers aren’t beating down the doors for art history or urban studies majors when they could be hiring a nineteen-year-old with a marketable skill as a plumber or plumbing assistant.

You don’t think that profession is worthwhile? Call a young first-year plumber during the holidays, when you have a stopped-up toilet, and ask him his going rate while standing in a foot of water and waste. The time for negotiations just went down the drain UNLESS, the drain gets unstopped by a trade school professional.

If I were in a position of influence on young people, I would seriously recommend two different trains of thought/profession: 1. Trade/technical school in a field that really challenges and motivates you. It could be welding, electricity, plumbing, carpentry, diesel mechanics, painting, ironworking, HVAC installation and repair. 2. Meet with military recruiters and look at new and different opportunities in our armed services. The sign-on bonuses are amazing; free education; VA home loans and built-in skills for life.

There’s an old adage: “The more things change; the more they stay the same.”

They never saw my Mom using her NEW flip phone, trying to find the Colbert County High School score or her oldest son’s goofy blog.