THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT

My old friend and fellow blogger, Grumpy (grumpy-olddog.blogspot.com), recently wrote a couple of excellent blogs regarding changes in the way kids are raised and spend their time. All of which got me thinking in my old fart way of the changes in family life today.

Grumpy mentioned the importance of family dinners when he was young, and such dinners were an essential way of life for me and my family---and most families in the old days, I believe. He also talked about the lack of grammar in kid's talk today. which really struck another chord with me. I would have had my head bashed in by literate parents if i misused the native tongue.

I think such examples are symptomatic of the whole lifestyle change of today compared with even as recently as twenty years ago. Life has sped up so much with the flow of information available today and the whole age of information surrounding us. With all the new technology and information available, I don't think we have time to absorb it all. In a sense, it uses us and not a case of us using it. We are slaves to this new technology and information in a kind of weird role reversal.

Take, for example, the new smart phones. Do we really need to use them as much in both talk and texting as most kids do today? I say kids, but I have two daughters in particular who rarely are seen for any period of time without a phone in their ear or at their fingertips. It is all so easy and quick, just to run a stream of consciousness of thoughts into your phone and instantly communicate. It is this impulse, taken to the extreme, that makes social networks like Twitter such a bore to me. Who really gives a rat's ass how Mary spent her morning or how she had a fight with her hubby ot if she got laid last night? TMI is the operative word. Information is wonderful when it is useful and makes life improved---but too much is a bore...

In the ancient days of snailmail---you remember, when people wrote letters and mailed them with a stamp---I'm sure you can recall that if you try, you thought about what you were going to say and put it down on paper in some kind of organized way. And when you got a letter you sat down, read it and thought about it. Sometimes you even saved them and reread them later; you didn't delete or send them off to some netherland of cyberspace. I have an old friend, going back to college days where we were fraternity brothers and later batchelor roommates in New York
City, who was a writer by trade, and for sixty years we have exchanged letters---yes, snailmail, even today, although under certain circumstances we do email each other, as well.

Do kids still play games calling for imagination and make-believe---or is every game on an X-box or phone? Do kids still talk, or do they only text? I have one grandson who is going through the early teens syndrome, which is complicated to some degree by ADD. He talks in monosyllables, texts every moment he can or plays computer or phone games. I know he is not unusual today; I'm sure he's just like most other boys in his age group.

I think many are bewildered in this fast and changing world of information, and I believe it is one of the causes of so much malaise, disorientation and discontent. We often don't have time to catch our breath. We often don't have time to talk together about things. And I think that is sad.