I often hear complaints from folks about how the world is going to Hell in a handbasket because "this younger generation ain't got it like we had it". They feel that kids today have it too easy. They don't have to walk three miles each way to school every day. They have never chopped cotton. They don't know what it is like to be hungry.
I say, "Thank God for that." The advances in medicine alone is enough to justify some changes.
Imagine if everything had stayed the same as when you were a youngster. It's a great place to visit in our minds, but I'm not sure we'd really want to live there again. We are too spoiled. You and me. Convenience has made us soft. Dang, we don't even get out of the recliner to change the TV channel. And the signal quality is better than anything we had ever imagined. It has been a long time since I was involved in a two person project just to pick up "Tarzan". You remember. One person would stand near the door, just in sight of the television, and yell out to the other person whose job was to turn the antenna pole with a pipe wrench until the signal of one of the three channels available was clear enough to see and hear that wild monkeyman yell.
I agree that kids have no clue as to what life was really like back then. My youngest son, Robby, used to think everything was black and white when I was a kid. He meant EVERYTHING, not just television. Cars, people, cows, bicycles, everything was black and white. Come to think of it I guess it kind of was b&w, at least in my memory. The temperature in my memory was always a pleasant 73 degrees and the sun always shone. Lucky me.
I try to tell my children about my own childhood. I don't think I will ever truly paint the proper picture of what it was like, but they will at least have a glimmer of what the world looked like through my own child-eyes.
No, they don't have it the way we did. They have their own problems and joys. They have their own way of talking. They have their own memories. They have their own future. We need to make sure that we give them a connection to their heritage.
My daddy used to tell my sister and me to hold our breath anytime we crossed a state line while driving. He said we could claim that we had held our breath in two states. It was fun. I'm not sure why.
My son, Nicholas, just visited from college. He brought his new girlfriend for us to meet. They had just sat down on the couch when she laughed about him telling her to hold her breath when they crossed the state line. It was fun. She didn't know why. It just did.
It is amazing how some things that appear trivial can grow with time.
