Kids These Days

There’s no doubt about it. We live in a very different world than the one I grew up in. When watching TV or checking out things online (“What the fuck is the internet?”) I see stories that involve kids where I just say to myself “If these kids grew up in my childhood they would have died on the first day of school.” There’s also the issue of technology and the fact that I think kids are just spoiled brats. I decided to make a list of things that I and a few friends think will be completely foreign to kids. Most of these already are. Here are ten things I thought of out of like a hundred.

1. Hanging Up The Phone. “Will you hang up that phone?” Some people, like me, still say this even though it doesn’t make sense to say it anymore. I have cordless phones and I still think of myself hanging up the phone even though there is a small beep when I end a call. When I was little we had a phone that hung on the wall. I liked it because it kept you where you were. You couldn’t walk around bugging the rest of the house with your loud ass conversations. Kids nowadays don’t even know what a phone cord is. There was nothing more embarrassing than forgetting how long the cord was and walking away and then having the damn thing get snatched from the crook of your neck and slamming against the wall. And if the phone broke that was your ass.

2. Butterfly Net. Me and Cam have discussed this many times. When I was little the universal symbol for crazy was a butterfly net. Now I think its showing someone shaking with a bottle of pills. If you watch old cartoons and Three Stooges you will almost always see the guys in the white suits show up and try to catch someone acting strange with a butterfly net before throwing them in the loony bin. Kids probably don’t even know what a butterfly is besides that thing teens get tattooed above their asscracks. I for one wish the net would come back as a means of capturing people. Its perfectly built for handling crazy. Can we get some kinda petition started to bring these back? I would walk proudly down the street with one just waiting for some ignorant ass mofo to start talking that crazy shit and be like "Gotcha!"

3. Metal Trashcans. Oh, these fucking things! Now there are three trashcans. One for regular trash, one for recyclables, and one for nature shit. When I was little it would never fail. Thursday morning would come and we’d hear the trashman coming. My mother would scream “Did y’all take the trash out?!” which we hadn’t. Me and one of my brothers would rush to the backyard and grab this heavy ass thing. It had no wheels. It was rusty at the bottom. It would make the loudest sound at 6am as we pulled them down the driveway. The handles were perfectly made to dig into your skin too. I bet kids don’t even take out trash anymore.

4. Record Players. I loved record players. Yes, I own an iPod now and walk around the city blasting Alice In Chains, Dr. Dre, and Metallica. But when I was a kid there was nothing weird about sitting in front of a record player and listening to an album over and over again. Yeah, I had to deal with records scratching or skipping but that was nothing a little rubbing alcohol or butter couldn’t fix. Yes, I said butter. It really did work but you’d have to really clean the needle afterwards. Yeah, a needle. You would place it in the groove and wait a few seconds for the songs to start. If you had a 45 there was a little clip that was inserted so you could play it. Until a few years ago I owned a record player and I miss it.

5. Playing Outside. God forbid kids still played outside. When I was little going outside to play was the best thing ever invented. Being told you couldn’t go and play either with friends or by yourself was the meanest fucking thing your parent could do. I would go insane. Even though I had toys and some video games indoors I wanted to be outside sweating and getting filthy. When it rained at school and we couldn’t go on the playground it was as close to a death sentence as we could get. You don’t see kids playing outside anymore. For anyone that says how I don’t leave the house enough, I took care of that as a child.

6. Asking An Adult. Back before the internet existed (yeah, they say the internet is decades old but lets cut the shit, it wasn’t useful until about ten years ago) you had to actually find someone older than you and ask them if they knew the answer to a question. Or if you were like me you’d grab the encyclopedia that had more than half the letters missing and hope you could find out what you wanted to know. You would sometimes, wait for it, sit with an older relative and ask them questions about life when they were your age. Now kids just grab their cell phone and text some site to get an answer while their parent sits in the other room drinking wine and taking pills wondering why their kids don’t talk to them anymore.

7. Real Bullies. They have this thing called “Cyberbullying”. When I was a kid there were real fucking bullies. They wouldn’t sit across town or more often than not in another fucking state and write that you’re a poopyhead. I wish they would’ve because what I had to deal with were bullies that never missed a day of school and was there to physically attack you. They wouldn’t write about what the were going to do to you. They did it! Every. Fucking. Day. I know what it feels like to have my lip busted and punched so hard in the stomach that I cant breathe and my bowels want to release. Which leads me to…

8. Pain. Have you seen playgrounds recently? They are made of plastic and rubber and there isn’t even real ground. They have plastic mats that are there to prevent kids from hurting their delicate little knees and elbows when they fall. That’s if someone isn’t there to toss a pillow under them before they hit the ground. When I was little the jungle gym was a literal jungle. Steel and wood. The steel was 1200 degrees in the summer and ice cold in the winter. The wood was used from old Viking ships that had burned at sea. Splinters and I were very close friends. I got hurt all the time. I’ve rolled my ankles more times than I can count. I have fallen off of roofs. Stepped on rusted nails. I still have a scar and cant move my baby toe on my left foot from slicing it open on a sprinkler. Did I go to the hospital? No. My mother poured alcohol and peroxide on it.

9. Losing. When I was a kid second place meant that you were just the first one to lose. Now everyone is a winner. The team that loses games still gets a pizza party. Fuck that noise. My entire competitive nature is based off the fact that I smash the shit out of you and I get the pussy! I mean pizza. Look at my hobbies. Drawing, painting, blogging, podcasts, writing, and making short films. All things done alone. Know why? Because I like to destroy! I merc’d kids when I had to play with them. Kids cry now when they lose. But then they smile because they still get a trophy. Know what kids got when I was little? An ass kicking and a “Don’t lose again!” I played volleyball in high school and I was a monster because I hate losing. But why would kids nowadays care if they lose when they still get prizes?

10. Fighting. There were so many fights when I was a kid! I would fight my brothers and cousins out of school. I would fight other kids at school. I would fight fights that didn’t even involve me. I kicked a kid right in the asshole that was messing with my cousin in front of my Grandmama’s house. Kids don’t fight anymore. They kill. They turned that shit up to 11 and took things too far. There’s no shame in getting your ass kicked every once in a while. Your champion, me, has lost a lot of fights. “They don’t count since its your brother…” Fuck you, okay? I have four brothers and two of them have different fathers. One of them and I didn’t get along and when he hit me it wasn’t full of brotherly love. They were “Fuck you, stranger!” punches. He didn’t stop until I kept coming back for more. Stop shooting each other and learn to take a punch, children.