THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 24, 1995 TAG: 9509220193
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: ON THE STREET
SOURCE: Bill Reed
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Kids. What are we adults going to do with 'em?
They're always gumming up the works some way. At least we adults like to think so. After all, look at the perfect world that we made, then see what they're doing to it.
Dyeing their hair purple. Or green. Piercing their ears, noses, nipples and belly buttons for some sort of bodily adornment. Listening to ear-splitting heavy metal or punk rock or rap music.
Music! we oldsters sniff. Why, if that's music, so is the sound coming from the thumb-screw room in Saddam Hussein's Baghdad palace or the McDonnell-Douglas jet propulsion laboratory.
Hootie and the Blowfish - what kind of a name is that for a popular band? Sounds like something you'd find in the bottom of the bait box.
And those clothes! The grunge look - yuck! Looks like they raided the closet at the House of Horrors, or worse yet, the dumpster in back of the House of Horrors.
Why, in the old days folks knew enough to wear their trousers above their hips, not around their knees - at least in public.
And how about those wool knit caps, the kind that pull down around the ears? They're designed for winter wear, not midsummer beach cruising. They get real scratchy when the temperature hovers around 99 degrees Fahrenheit in July or August.
Yet you'll see young 'uns in droves, hanging out in the local mall in full pout, wearing those knit caps, puffing on cigarettes and glaring at us adults, waddling past in Spandex tights maxed out from cellulite overload or tank tops and shorts that accentuate the beer gut, the love handles, the body hair or all of the above.
In our day, we hung out at the local drive-in. That's what we called fast-food joints since they predated McDonald's or Burger King by several thousand years.
The outdoor drive-in movies were called drive-ins as well, but they were known in those days as ``passion pits'' for obvious reasons. Yes, kids, old folks liked to have fun, too,when they were teenagers. So, sue us.
Like kids these days, kids in those days were bored, but they didn't compound the problem by going to the town of Franklin or some other burg and sulking on a street corner and whining about how it's a nowhere place to be.
No, we used our boredom creatively. We had food fights in the school cafeteria, poured paprika sauce in the football star's athletic supporter, plugged up the exhaust of the local cop car with an Idaho potato or had hot rod races on deserted country roads.
Nowadays us old gaffers cluck disapprovingly at how easy kids nowadays have it; how they're throwing away their youth and energy on frivolous or meaningless pursuits and how they need discipline and direction in life.
Sounds kind of familiar, huh? Seems our parents and grandparents said the same thing when we were little nippers in the throes of hormonal overdrive.
And guess what? Some of us even survived to adulthood and amounted to something. I mean some of us became responsible, caring human beings who love our children and their children and try our hardest to see that they grow up responsible and caring as well.
Therefore, hope is not lost that the generational cycle will remain intact. There are always casualties along the way, of course - kids who don't or can't make it due to circumstances that they could or couldn't control.
But, if history repeats itself - and it often does - youngsters now coming along should reach the same heights and depths that their moms and dads did and their grandparents before them. And sooner than they would like it to happen, they'll be in charge and looking disapprovingly at their offspring's peccadillos. Ain't life grand? by CNB