Children are our future janitors

The other day while I was making sweet love to myself, I came across an article that stated that kids are much stupider than they were a generation ago. I’m not sure that I can agree with that bold declaration even though I have always felt that all kids are morons. Consider these alarming made up statistics: 2 out of 3 teenagers do not know how to spell their own name. 90% of all children under the age of 14 eat their own nose mucus. 4 out of 5 children born after 1995 hate their grandparents. I could go on and on about these startling figures but perhaps the greatest and most disappointing statistic is that three quarters of all kids under the age of 30 haven’t the foggiest idea what “three quarters” means. Of course, I could grumble disparagingly about “kids nowadays” like every other person over the age of 29 does but I just don’t buy into that kind of generational outlook. To listen to those grumblers you would think that they did their homework between shifts at the coal mine. I don’t believe the argument that kids nowadays are any more idiotic than any other batch of miscreant children from generations past. I can supply an example from my own past that begins with this shocking quotation: “Don’t go boogieing off.” Those were the words of a 12 year old bully, tormenting a future devil of handsome proportions, namely, me. Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of maturity (roughly 19 and a half years old) I can look back through the years and face those awful, smelly memories of my youth. I’ve harbored a great deal of resentment toward that nameless bully who could turn a phrase so majestically. Maybe it was the threat of being pummeled by him and his gang of pre-pubescent thugs or it might have been simple jealousy over his grammatical skill, being able to turn the word “boogie” into a gerund. In any case, the scars run deep my friends, the scars run deep. Even though I’m not a day over 20ish, I can recall that fateful day with frightening clarity. The kind of gruesome clarity that makes for expensive therapy bills. I was a lad of 9 or maybe 10 and I’d just gotten a new bike for my birthday or gentile bar mitzvah or something. Come to think of it, I’m not sure the bike was new. But I do know, with shockingly accurate clarity, that it was summer. Or possibly autumn. I can swear that it wasn’t winter, because I was riding a bike. Anyway, there I was, young and carefree, riding my bike around the block like a young (9 or 10 years old) Steve McQueen, breaking all the rules and thumbing my nose at “the man”. (As a child, I was deeply opposed to “the man” – “the man” being authority, not necessarily that man who drove a van slowly past the elementary schools. That guy was OK because he had candy.) Anyway, all of a sudden a gang of ruffians appeared out of nowhere and the leader of the gang blocked my path. He demanded to know what I was doing, riding my bike with awesome skill around his neighborhood. I believe that my reply was no doubt witty and probably laden with subtext that would astound anyone who heard it but that ruffian was not impressed and after an exchange of delightful banter (witty, thought provoking, chock full of unique observations) he pushed me and my pant leg got caught in the bike chain and I fell over backwards. He and his gang of future Mensa candidates laughed and left me in a state of bloody elbow, torn pant leg and a lasting belief that kids are idiots and ought to be locked up. In any case, the moral of this story (because apparently you need one of those for everything you talk about) is that kids are not any getting smarter and something ought to be done about it. So get to it.