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May 22, 2003 One of the things that never fails to make me feel like an old fogy, other than my hair is falling out, and I'm only 33, is the fact that nothing seems as good as it used to be. My daughter will be three July 1st and when I look at the world that she will grow up in as compared to my own childhood it's kind of depressing. I know that she won't get to know a world when we still had school Christmas parties and anthrax was yet to be a heavy metal band much less a threat to homeland security. Growing up my parents always bowled on Friday nights. For me this is a very fond memory because they would take me along and while they were bowling I would horse around and rough house with the other kids there, play video games and harass the old crab that worked behind the front desk. For those parents out there would you dream of this? I keep both eyes on my daughter in the children's room of the library that I work at so I sure wouldn't let her run wily nilly in a bowling alley while my attention was more on picking up ten pins. I do want to say here and now that I have the best parents in the history of parents and they weren't being neglectful. True, I was a great deal older than my daughter is now, but you could do it back then, back then being the early seventies, and not worry especially in a small town establishment like the Holiday Bowl. Everybody knew everybody else and most people were on the lookout for everyone else's children. What I'm trying to say is that while bad things happened there wasn't such an air of fear and anxiety that we have now. Maybe it there was there and I didn't see it. Obviously my parents didn't and if it was there I doubt it was to the level of stress that people experience today. I will also add that while we were at the bowling alley our doors at home were unlocked and we never thought a thing about it. That's another practice that has long ago been abandoned. Now I can think of two arguments that people will present in regards to my little treatise here. I know that partially the reason that I look back on my childhood so idyllically was that I was a child with no responsibilities who naively traipsed through life oblivious to such disasters as the gas crisis, the recession and the Carter presidency. That does present a valid point but you can't tell me that the world wasn't a better place before school shootings, when terrorism only happened in places like Beirut and Northern Ireland and Marilyn Manson was a little delinquent back in Ohio pulling the wings off robins. People also like to point out the improvements that technology has made in our lives and I won't disagree with that. I'm a librarian and you just can't understate the positive impact that the internet as made on library work and life in general. What I will say is that while there have been a great many improvements another thing that this huge influx of technology has done is make our lives so much more complicated. I'll use medicine and health care as an example. When my wife was pregnant with our child one of the plethora of tests that she was subjected to was called an AFP or Alpha-Feta Protein test. As it turns out the mother doesn't have to take this test because it can be very unreliable depending greatly upon the exact date of the conception of the baby, a date which we didn't know. The test checks for the level of Alpha-Feta proteins in the woman's body and can rate the likelihood of various birth defects such as Anencephaly and Down's syndrome. Well my wife had the test just before the biggest snow storm to hit central North Carolina since Strom Thurmond walked upright and as the flakes had begun to fall she was called back to the doctor. He informed her that her AFP's were high and to come back for another test. We wouldn't know what the results of the tests were until the doctors could get back to their offices which would be a good week. As it turns out there was no problem and we have a happy, healthy daughter. Afterwards we told several people about all the worrying that we had done while we were snowed in and some of them had similar situations. Some women have told me that they refused to take the test. I know that all theses tests are precautionary and it's probably good that they're administered, but does anybody ever wonder how much of it is actually necessary and how much is just a case of the doctors covering their own behinds? Would it be better in most cases to do like they used to and go to the doctor when you thought you were pregnant then came back in nine months and have your baby? Maybe so, maybe not. In talking about medicine and health I guess that can lead us into food and the modern thoughts on food, health and this country's rapidly expanding waistline. Now don't get me wrong I can understand the importance of eating right, but what really is important to our health and more importantly what is healthy and what is not. Vegetarians say that meat is bad for you, that our bodies were never meant to digest meat, but other people will say that meat is essential for getting enough protein. Others will say just don't eat red meat, that chicken, fish and pork are better for you, but then again some will say that pork is bad because pigs are filthy animals and that there are high concentrations of mercury in the fish so that's bad for you to. The chicken is usually okay provided its not fried which is the best way to eat it in my opinion and it depends on the day of the week as to whether eggs are good for you or not. Then again it's okay what you eat but according to some people don't cook it in aluminum because you'll get Alzheimer's. Then there's drinking and smoking which could be the subject of a whole new article, and how important is exercise? Is it okay to eat what we want just so we're active? My father told me that my grandmother always cooked with fatback and rather than waste it my grandfather would eat the fatback itself, which, as the name implies is pure fat. He lived to be eighty, but Grandpa was out in the fields plowing with a team of mules, working at a saw mill, things like that rather than sitting behind a desk or plopped down on the couch watching T.V. That may have been a contributing factor. So we have a choice of eating and drinking nothing and getting our nutrients from the air we breath, which that's no good a smoker might walk by and kill us dead, or eating what we want and dying a little sooner with big smiles on our faces and bloody red meat between our yellow nicotine stained teeth. When you count in all the stress it's hard to say which is better. But I digress I started talking about differences in the lives of out children so I'll mention three more things that I think kids are seriously lacking in this day and age and then I'll shut up and let everybody mull it over. Entertainment- I'm a great connoisseur of cartoons having grown up on the classics: Bugs Bunny and Road Runner, Flintstones, the Jetsons, Fat Albert, the Super Friends and their ilk and really get distressed at what's passed off on our kids today as entertainment. Some of these cartoons today need to lay off the potty humor; it gets pretty gross on some shows that say they're family friendly. Also who draws these things? The cartoons that I used to watch, and still do when I can find them on actually took talent to draw and put together. These days all the cartoons look like Walt Disney dropped acid. It sad when the best art on television today are the Rugrats and The Wild Thornberry's, which are good shows for their content, but let's face it you don't have to be Rembrandt to draw them. I won't get into prime time T.V. There not near enough room. Too Much Electronic Crap- I got an Atari 2600 when I was in Junior High and let me tell you I thought I was high tech. Alas it doesn't hold a candle to the gizmos that kids have these days and I can't help but think that this isn't all a good thing. I was walking through the parking lot of the library the other day and meant two girls probably twelve or thirteen years old wearing halter tops and crotch length shorts. Their conversation went as follows: "I tell you what. When you get my email call me on my cell." "Is your cell working? Didn't your Dad cancel the service?" "Yeah it's working, but if you can't get me on my cell page my baby brother and he'll call my cell or send me a text message." "Okay. Hey have you seen my palm pilot." I wanted to say: "Okay Girls, first off go home and put on some clothes. Then give all that electronic crap back to someone who can afford it, and actually needs it. Go home and ride your bicycle." I didn't though. My cell phone rang. Parents: This is the aspect of children's lives these days that bothers me the most. Where as when I was in elementary school most of the kids had both parents, these days many don't. In fact in some segments of the population the percentage of children coming from broken homes teeters around 70%. Children who should be a labor of love from the time that they're a twinkle in their Daddy's eye are reduced to nothing more than a lack of restraint on the part of some and a lack of scruples on the part of others. Kids are brought into this world by people who don't want them in the first place and are subsequently ignored, neglected, abused and in some of the more affluent cases given a shiny new trinket where a hug or an "I love you" would have been a whole lot better. For those of you in charge of our younger generations you have to remember that one day these kids will be in charge of running the world. They'll also be in charge of taking care of us so think about how it would feel to swap places with your kids because one day you might. You know we require licenses for some of the things that require a great deal of responsibility: driving a car, owning a gun etc. To bad we can't require a license to breed as well. ------------ Email Jonathan Farlow: jonathan-farlow@excite.com Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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