Shaking my fist at the world.
Not complaining...or maybe I am. I was reading Rangers post in the political forum about coaching baseball and kids today being softer and overall, sporting a higher degree of smartassitude. As a man in his 40's..ish...or thereabouts, and a father of 2 (One graduated high school Friday and the other is 8...so I get to do it all over again) I've made the following observations in recent years about changing times and how differently kids are brought up as opposed to even a short 20-30 years ago.
As I said, my son is 8 and just yesterday, finished the second grade. We just finished up baseball season, which I coached and which also took up no more than a few hours a week of his time. Outside of the games and me working with him in the yard on hitting etc. I have him enrolled at one of these sports academies for baseball skillz one afternoon and a speed and agility class on Monday nights. He enjoys all that but would easily opt for other things if given the chance. The "Other things" he has available to him goes to the heart of the differences in kids and to a certain extent, young adults today.
Here's where I sound like everyone's father talking about the way things were and walking 5 miles to school every day...barefoot...up hill both ways...in the snow...and we liked it. At my son's age, coming home from school (And yes, I either walked or rode my bike) the last place I wanted to be was inside the house. I could not put my books and school stuff down fast enough to get out the door. Fortunately, there were about 7-8 kids within about a year or two of my age living on the same block and we all had the same mindset. Get out of the house and get into anything our imaginations could dream up. Typical of my childhood was:
Besides organized sports, we'd play the usual back yard football, basketball in the driveway til' we couldn't see at night. I was probably the baddest mofo of a whiffle ball player anyone ever encountered. Clearing the row of Azalea bushes was a home run.
Fixing up bicycles and jumping anything we could put a ramp on.
Stealing wood from some local construction site and building "Forts" in the back yard.
Launching water balloons at cars and passing school buses from behind the bushes at the edge of Lee Chancellor's yard. (We had an escape route that was fool proof...never got caught)
Exploring the huge drainage ditch at the end of the block. Even got some old tire intertubes after it rained like a bitch one day and negotiated the rapids.
Sneaking over the neighbors wall and swimming in their pool every chance we got.
Riding our bikes almost daily to the 7-11 for the latest Spider Man, Hulk or any other new Marvel comic that may be out. 3 Muskateers and a Jungle Juice were standard parts of our diet as well.
Fighting. Not a week would pass where a couple of us weren't throwing haymakers and wrestling to the death...only to be best friends again the very next day while stirring up fire ant beds, catching bumblebees in mason jars or trying to climb every tree in the neighborhood.
So, what are my son's preferences for entertainment? UNFORTUNATELY, we don't live in a neighborhood with a ton of kids his age and we certainly aren't in a day and age where you let your kids just walk out and go find their friends...just be home by suppertime or you'll get the belt. His options are things that didn't exist when I was growing up. There were 4 channels you could pick up with the rabbit ears...ABC, NBC, CBS & Public Television. Now, basic cable gives you about 75 channels to surf. Computers in my day were big, wall-size monstrosities on TV with blinking lights and some reel to reel shit going on. I don't need to go into what's available to people of all ages on teh intrawebs. (Save the porn jokes) He's no different than anyone else, he can sit at the Dell for hours and be perfectly happy and completely entertained. He has teh Wii's, Guitar Hero, Nintendo, Playstation and on and on and on.
We had Atari Pong. Boop
There were no DVDs and Movie Gallery or Ipods or even cell phones. Overall, technology simply didn't play a big part in my upbringing. I would dare say that most 12 year olds are more technologically savy than I will ever be. My son gets a new game, opens it up, plugs in all the wires and controllers and is working Level III or some shit in 15 minutes time. I'm watching all of it going, "I don't get it". I don't want to get it. I had to be pulled kicking and screaming into Verizon just to upgrade from my 7 year old flip phone. I could make calls...why do I want want more? You people constantly talk Madden and NCAA 09' and Legions of Dungeon Doom and Gloom. NCAA 74' for us was a little electric football field board with football player cutouts that you placed where you wanted and flicked the switch on the board while they rattled around. Operation and Twister were the bomb. Still are.
It's really hard for some of you to grasp a world without having "the world" at the press of a button. It did actually exist a few short years ago. Are my son and kids in general smarter and better able to face the technological challenges of that world in years to come? Probably so. Are they "softer" overall and lack many of the basic one on one communication skills? Without a doubt. Just like at this very moment, 90% of our interaction these days is typed. We email. We text. We post. Talking is done via Blackberry or Iphone. If we actually meet, we need to get shit faced just so we'll have something to say. Better to sit back to back and text each other.
Watching my son hit a line drive up the middle and come off the field grinning ear to ear is as they say...priceless. Having to call him 6 times to come to supper because he's absolutely entranced like a zombie in front of the TV, Nintendo or computer..does nothing for me. Can he program my Motorola Q9 better than I can? I'll wager he can. Can he throw a water balloon over a 10' hedge and hit a Plymouth Volare traveling 26 m.p.h.? I think not.
I think I'll go out back to my tree fort and read the latest issue of Iron Man.
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