Parents. Can't kill 'em, can't train 'em. I'm not by nature a conspiracy theorist, but I'm now convinced that there's something in the water — probably fluoridation — that not only saps our precious bodily fluids but turns parental brains to mush.
It happened to the Japanese years ago, and now they're living with a childhood suicide rate reaching 37% according to a poll conducted by the Japanese Institute of Suicide Statistics. It's going to happen here, you mark my words.
So, enough of an introduction. What the hell am I talking about? Perhaps a bit of history.
When I was a kid (an odd version of "when I was your age") parents and kids lived in separate worlds, touching only at meals, household chores, the occasional reprimand for lighting the cat on fire, those kinds of things. The rest of our time was for us — sandlot baseball or football, swimming in lakes infested with bacteria and viruses the Centers for Disease Control still haven't identified, playing cowboys and Indians with baseball bats as rifles, snitching our fathers' Playboy Magazines and pretending to get all excited about naked babes, stealing our parent's cigarettes and hacking our lungs out trying to be cool at the same time.
That was for boys, I guess. Girls got together and had tea parties, dressed up, and did whatever girls did. Boys and girls did not mingle. It was unseemly.
We didn't need parental supervision or guidance on the rules of baseball or who shot whom in a WWII re-enactment. We'd fight and argue about it, and then move on.
Today, it's a disaster. An infant's born, and within 90 seconds, its entire life is programmed by over-concerned parents. I wouldn't be surprised if there are tapes pregnant women play for their unborn babes explaining the schedule for hockey, football, ballet, elocution, piano lesson, flute lesson, tutors, and God knows what else. They're losing their childhood, defined by the famed sociologist, Isketa Fish, from the Norwegian Institute for the Criminally Insane, as "those years between relative physical independence in the primary organism resulting in an ability to function outside close parental control and that dread period known as adolescence, the less said of which the better."
Article comments
1 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
But The Children Are Our Future! Empty irrelevent rhetoric, I know--but it needed to be said, dammit...somehow, someway, maybe...or not.
2 - Mark Schannon
Gordon, the children are not our future. That's a lie spread by the Association for Forcing Children to Give up Their Childhood To Make Gobs of Money (AFCGUTCTMGOF). Children are their own future--we'll be dead, guy. Duh.
3 - S L Cunningham
A kid's world today certainly is not what it was when I was kid. In many ways, I think kids have too many distractions and don't interact with others in ways that allows for creative spontaneity. When you consider how much time is spent playing PS2, and talking on the cell phone with friends, very little time is spent outside anymore.
4 - Mark Schannon
True about all the technology, that's another example of the scambled brains of today's parents. Tell the kids to turn off the TV & get their little butts outside to play. But I would also argue that the loss of childhood is due more to zealous parents desperately trying to "prepare" their children for the finest schools, blah blah blah. Getting up at 5 a.m. for hockey practice, lessons here, schedules there.
5 - Joanie
Let's schedule every bit of our children's time to the nth degree. Take away their ability to be children. Don't bother to spend time with them. And, then don't be surprised when they turn into self-absorbed miscreants a la Heathers or Columbine.
While your article is funny, Mark, it hits the same scary notes that Richard Marcus' piece did.
Good work.
6 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
"the children are not our future. That's a lie spread by the Association for Forcing Children to Give up Their Childhood To Make Gobs of Money (AFCGUTCTMGOF). Children are their own future"
Ok, then--how about: "The Children's Childhood Is If Not Our Then Their Own Future's Future-dom!" ("TCCIINOTTOFF" for short, or if we can get the group you mentioned to sponsor the program, the AFCGUTCTMGOF's TCCIINOTTOFF for shorter)
7 - Mark Schannon
Thanks, Joanie. As a non-parent, I don't know why I care so much, except that my soon-to-be-in-my-lifetime-or-later novel deals with a coming of age thing for a kid in the 60s and it brought back memories of what childhood was supposed to be like.
Gordon, I have carefully reviewed your comment. I have submitted it to AFCGUTCTMGOF for review, and, of course, they rejected it, which means it's brilliant! Good work.
In Jamesons Veritas
8 - Gordon Hauptfleisch
Cool!--thanks Mark.
9 - Joey
Hey, you forgot about dancing in and out of the mosquito fog when the truck came through the neighborhood!
10 - Mark Schannon
Joey,
They didn't do that where I lived. Damn, I knew I'd missed something important growing up. Was it fun?
In Jameson Veritas
11 - Joey
It was great. Smelled good, stung your eyes... nothing like breaking up the boredom associated with a hot sultry summer evening.
12 - Mark Schannon
Damn, some people have all the luck!