Sarah Strohmeyer's Blog - Posts Tagged "9-11"
Kids: Why Can't They Be Like We Were....
....cynical?
Because that's how I felt growing up in the 1970s, as if I'd narrowly missed the cool generation and was doomed to a bogus youth of disco, tight polyester shirts and frizzy hair. (Thank GOD for Springsteen!) My all-purpose attitude back then? This. Sucks.
Fast forward to my son's generation. He's a high school sophomore which I think we can generally agree is the lamest of all teen years having, sadly, come of age in the worst of decades. He was stepping off the bus from Kindergaten when I met to tell him terrorists had flown into the World Trade Center and it was generally all downhill from there - global warming, two wars, a painful recession, teens shooting up schools. Awful.
And yet, amazingly, he doesn't think This. Sucks. Quite the opposite. He thinks this is the best time in the world to be his age.
Excuse me? Where's the teenage cynicism for which I was prepared to do battle with idiotic parental comments like, "It's up to YOUR generation to pick up the banner and march for a better world"? (Oh, I'm so glad I never had to say that.)
In Sam's view, incredibly exciting things are happening - live! Technology is bringing us closer together and the idea that a heretofore brain scratcher like, oh, how to stop cancer cells from replicating without killing the body, could be solved by putting it on the internet and letting everyone have at it, is thrilling to him. People are more tolerant about previously taboo subjects like gay marriage. We've evolved, in Sam's opinion, we're getting better!
Of course Sam has an older sister who doesn't quite see the world through such rosy glasses but why bring in Debbie Downer. (Expect Debbie Downer, a Goodreads member, to chime in with a rebuttal. Razor sharp tongue, that one. Funny, too.)
All I'm saying is it's easy to get mired down in the gloom of front page news. I know I'm more angry and bitter than I was before 9/11, not purposefully, but gradually so. The old boiled frog analogy. My arm is growing tired from the fist shaking I've done, most recently at our out-of-touch Supreme Court.
Maybe it's time for me to relax and uncurl my fingers and like the kids in Sam's generation open them to the possibilities. I just hope for people like me it's not too late.
Because that's how I felt growing up in the 1970s, as if I'd narrowly missed the cool generation and was doomed to a bogus youth of disco, tight polyester shirts and frizzy hair. (Thank GOD for Springsteen!) My all-purpose attitude back then? This. Sucks.
Fast forward to my son's generation. He's a high school sophomore which I think we can generally agree is the lamest of all teen years having, sadly, come of age in the worst of decades. He was stepping off the bus from Kindergaten when I met to tell him terrorists had flown into the World Trade Center and it was generally all downhill from there - global warming, two wars, a painful recession, teens shooting up schools. Awful.
And yet, amazingly, he doesn't think This. Sucks. Quite the opposite. He thinks this is the best time in the world to be his age.
Excuse me? Where's the teenage cynicism for which I was prepared to do battle with idiotic parental comments like, "It's up to YOUR generation to pick up the banner and march for a better world"? (Oh, I'm so glad I never had to say that.)
In Sam's view, incredibly exciting things are happening - live! Technology is bringing us closer together and the idea that a heretofore brain scratcher like, oh, how to stop cancer cells from replicating without killing the body, could be solved by putting it on the internet and letting everyone have at it, is thrilling to him. People are more tolerant about previously taboo subjects like gay marriage. We've evolved, in Sam's opinion, we're getting better!
Of course Sam has an older sister who doesn't quite see the world through such rosy glasses but why bring in Debbie Downer. (Expect Debbie Downer, a Goodreads member, to chime in with a rebuttal. Razor sharp tongue, that one. Funny, too.)
All I'm saying is it's easy to get mired down in the gloom of front page news. I know I'm more angry and bitter than I was before 9/11, not purposefully, but gradually so. The old boiled frog analogy. My arm is growing tired from the fist shaking I've done, most recently at our out-of-touch Supreme Court.
Maybe it's time for me to relax and uncurl my fingers and like the kids in Sam's generation open them to the possibilities. I just hope for people like me it's not too late.
