I believe it was the musical "Bye, Bye Birdie" that gave birth to the lyrics: "Kids, what's the matter with these kids today? Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way? Oh, what's the matter with kids today?"
It is quite easy for us "older folks" to draw contrasts between our own youth and the current crop of 12- to 20-year-olds. When making such contrasts, it is the usual practice to compare the conceived negative aspects of today's youth with the enhanced positive aspects of generations past.
Today's youth, many with their baggy pants, hats on backward, pierced and studded noses, eyebrows, navels etc., eyes glazed from too many hours of video-game blood, gore and mayhem, appear different. They are alien beings from another galaxy who have come to earth solely to reap the fruits of my hard work.
They are erect hominids with strange habits, dress, and speech that have it as their primary task to make me an alien in my own world. They are creatures that always know more than I do about the things I wish I knew something about. They laugh at my ethics and give me a blank look when I tell a joke. They create new words faster than I can learn them. (How do you spell "duh?") They have been sprinkled with pixie dust by Tinker Belle and have a resulting cockiness that comes from a belief in immortality. They are young, have always been young, and will forever be young.
I have news for them: Tinker Belle's dust is temporary; it wears off. I was once a youth, resplendent in my rolled up jeans and black sneakers, covered head to foot with a peculiar dusty substance. I was a child of the '50s, a boomer. Elvis was my king, Brigitte Bardot, my queen. I was lame from being chased by Officer Krumpski and Secretary McNamara, in dread terror of the military-industrial complex and disgustingly aware of the possibility of catching a social disease.
I was led by the beat of rock and roll, addicted to Ed Sullivan, in mourning for James Dean and scared out of any existential awareness by countless "duck and cover" drills. Bright futures existed only in Ray Bradbury and Arthur C. Clark novels. Around the corner of my tomorrow, there was only nuclear vaporization and the black snows of nuclear winter.
I was fluent in the language of the Beatnik, and later the Hippie. I laughed at "Dobie Gillis" and "Father Knows Best." I was a devotee of Duane Eddy, the Everly Brothers and Jerry Lee Lewis. I despised the New York Yankees and had faith that the Boston Red Sox would eventually win the World Series.
When I look about me at the youth of today, I naturally see a difference, but it is more of form than of substance. There has been only a changing of the gods. Global warming has replaced the horrors of a nuclear winter, and police in school corridors are filling in for "duck and cover." New, vaporous celebrities have stepped into the shoes of Elvis and Brigitte (I shudder at the thought). Krumpski and McNamara have faded only to be replaced by Elliot (SVU) and Gates.
Who would have believed that the dread military-industrial complex would have transformed into an insidious entity called "globalization," or that the sterile social diseases of the past could be replaced with killers like AIDS, Hepatitis C and incubating tropical diseases too horrible to contemplate.
Inevitably, the pixie dust lost potency, and I moved on. I am a youth no longer. I survived the ordeal. Today, I am a husband, a father and a grandfather. I am a homeowner with thousands of Kodak moments filling boxes in the attic. It was to these boxes that I gravitated one dark and dismal Sunday afternoon.
While rummaging through the old boxes I came across a tattered and yellowed pamphlet, which had been created and published by the Houston, Texas Police Department back in the 1950s. The pamphlet was entitled: "For Parents: How To Make A Child Into a Delinquent -- 12 Easy Rules."
The simple words in that pamphlet made sense in the 1950s, and they still do. Some of the terms appear a bit dated, much like actors in old movies appear today as they suck on a cigarette. However, like many of the old movies, a classic is still a classic.
I sat on the floor, leaned back against the exposed knee-wall and spent about an hour reading, rummaging and remembering. Remembering the past is, after all, one thing we do better than the younger folks.
I'd like to dedicate the words in that old pamphlet to present and future parents everywhere.
"For Parents: How To Make A Child Into a Delinquent -- 12 Easy Rules."
1. Begin at infancy to give the child everything he wants. In this way, he will grow up to believe the world owes him a living.
2. Give a child all the spending money he wants. Never let him earn his own. Why should he have things as tough as you had them?
3. Satisfy the child's every craving for food, drink and comfort. See that every sensual desire is gratified. Denial may lead to harmful frustration.
4. When he picks up bad language, laugh at him. This will make him think he's cute.
5. Never give the child any spiritual training. Wait until he is 21, and then let him decide for himself.
6. Avoid the use of the word "wrong." It may develop a guilt complex. This will condition him to believe later, when he is arrested for stealing a car, that society is against him, and he is being persecuted.
7. Pick up everything he leaves lying around-books, shoes, clothes. Do everything for him so that he will be experienced in throwing all responsibility on others.
8. Let him read any printed matter he can get his hand on.
9. Quarrel frequently in the presence of your children.
10. Take his part against neighbors, teachers and policemen. They are prejudiced against your child.
11. When he gets into real trouble, apologize for yourself by saying, "I never could do anything with him."
12. Finally, prepare for a life of grief, for if the other 11 rules are followed closely; you will be likely to have it.
As I sat in that attic amidst the scattered, dusty boxes of ages past, my mind drifted to a time when my own children were small and entrusted to me. Have I done right by them? Did I give them the proper tools for cutting through that jungle out there? Have I done the best job of parenting possible?
Like my parents, I made mistakes. Now, trying hard to see back into the hazy past, I find that I cannot remember details with clarity and precision. However, when I concentrate on the now, look at my grown children, see their smiles and the smiles of their growing children, I know that I, like my parents before me, did the best job I could.
If children come with a book of instructions, we did not go by it, often did not have time to read it if we had it. Instead, we held our children's hands when there was danger, held them tight when they cried or were frightened, worked hard for their daily bread and rejoiced at their accomplishments and hurt profoundly when they failed.
We brought them into the world with an act of love, raised them as an act of love, and now we watch them with love. It was not easy raising them. It is no less easy when they become adults. The laughing and the crying, the pleasure and the hurt, the victories and the defeats; the entire process holds me in wonder. It is life, and life in its fullness is wonderful.
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