Recently I was talking to my cousin who will remind you on a daily basis he is about to be 18 years old and will be an adult. He has made a choice not to drive nor hold a job. Of course to me, this is not 18 year-old behavior, but who am I to talk? I mean in my day, when you were 16 you learned to drive, got a job, and you got a car and acted like an 18 year old-years before you actually turned 18 and it got me thinking…

I’m not sure what kids today are complaining about. They say they don’t want to work and jobs don’t pay well. Yet in my day the minimum wage was anywhere from 1.60-2.30 an hour. You worked all day to make about 20 bucks. With today’s standards, that is what a kid spends at Starbucks. What happened to our kids of today?

I think there are several things. First they are now calling kids today the “Me generation” and though for many cases, this is very true, I would be more prone to call them the kids of virtual reality generation. Most these kids have friends they have never met. They live in the shadows of Facebook and say they have tons of friends, but much like many kids that are 16 and 17, they have yet to date or be kissed. It’s hard to give a real kiss to a friend on Facebook.

I feel so sorry for these kids today because despite all their technology and their virtual lives, there are things they will never experience.  Can you imagine a kid getting up to turn the TV station? Most laugh when you say it used to be you had to move if you wanted to change the station. Today kids can watch TV on their cell phones or computer.

When I was younger, you would get a real voice over the telephone and not just a recording. You could actually get an operator and pay a bill, not have to push a button, and get questions answered. Kids today will never experience that sort of compassion over the phone. Pretty soon, they will never know what a drive-in bank teller was; they are quickly on their way out.

Here is another thing kids won’t have a chance to experience; Square flash bulbs. They used to be so incredible to me. I could stick the square on my camera, which by the way actually was loaded with real film. You would get a chance to get four flashes to capture your memory and then pop it off to place another cube on the camera. Sometimes if you took the cube off too fast, it would burn your finger tips. In addition, kids today will never experience the anticipation of waiting for your film to come so you can see your pictures.

Maybe that is the biggest thing today’s kids will never experience; anticipation. That word no longer exists. Everything is instant. You can’t get a hold of someone at home; you can call their cell phone, page or grab them on Facebook. We live in a disposable society.

I feel sorry for kids of today because they will never experience a thing called albums. The art on albums were incredible and the sound of  vinyl, well it just can’t be replaced, even the smell of an album when you first opened it as unforgettable. In addition, they will never have to get off their behinds and turn these wonderful black disks over and place the needle gently on the record. Listening to music was a ritual. It was a verb that required an action. We worked to listen to our music, which at times, I felt made it sound better.

Growing up in Tucson, there was nothing like a drive-in movie. We no longer have these and are being charged a fortune to go to a theater and being crammed like sardines to watch a movie only to have to sit in front of some kid who goes to movies so they can text their BFF.  My neighbors on the ranch rent movies and put them on a projector outside and has created their own drive-in so their 17 year olds have the honor of watching a movie out under the stars.

So many kids today sadly, will not have the opportunity like we had to experience so many things that had touch, texture and smell. Certain things we did actually required us to move a body part besides a finger. Which is why I have no doubt diabetes is on the increase for kids. We don’t move, then we get stagnate and it affects our health. We had real friends, not virtual friends. We lived in a real community and grew real gardens, not Farmville and an online community. We did not send virtual hugs to people we never met, we hugged people because we knew and loved them. Yep, things in my day you could actually touch, taste and smell. I like some of today’s technology, but wish we could integrate real life with virtual life.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2011 at 10:31 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.