Kids Today
I am not a fan of articles like this, which tell us what the incoming freshmen have never known. Not because it makes me feel old; I never feel old. But it’s intended to SHOCK us with the changes that have swept the world since we were in short pants, such as “today’s incoming freshmen have no idea what the phrase ‘since we were in short pants’” means. This list is particularly thin.
They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.
Really? We have a phone with a curly cord, and it’s not because I’m some traditionalist who thinks them wireless phones give you roomytism or upsets the chickens. I just like having a corded phone in case the power goes out. My daughter, who’s ten, will grow up having twisted the wire. Whether with purpose or aimlessly remains to be seen.
They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.
Perhaps; people don’t wear watches as much as they used to. Cellphones have taken the place of watches, which is a step backwards - you have to take it out like a pocket watch, without any of the old-timey satisfaction of looking like a fellow who hears the train whistle, checks his timepiece, and thinks right on schedule.
E-mail is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
This is probably true; in the future, email will be the exclusive domain of grandparents sending around funny stories and urban myths.
“Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-cafvanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.
Street corner lingo? Que pasa, man? Sup? What’s crackalackin’ in this gangsta hood? Oh, you know, ain’t nothing going on but the rent and the venti half-cafvanilla latte. I hear that.
John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
They have no idea who he is, nor do they care, nor do most people.
Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
The movie said he was switched on in 1992, which would make him 18, but even if he was still activated - and hadn’t been destroyed in 2010, as per the movie, after Dr. Chandra assured him he would (sniff) indeed dream - it is unlikely he would have been someone’s college classmate, being a computer in space.
They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
Doubtful. They saw the picture on the Sistine Chapel ceiling first, if only as a parody of something else.
And so on. Previous lists have been a bit more jarring; this one seems to suggest the paucity of change over the last few years. What really annoys, in a small sense, is the idea that the kids have no idea of what came before them. Ten year olds, perhaps, but by the time you’re 18 you should have an inkling that there was actually a vast and vibrant culture that preceded the anointing of the globe with your generation. Perhaps I was an odd kid, but I was fascinated with the past when I was young - the 20 and the 40s, mostly. If you watched cartoons, you watched Bugs Bunny, which was saturated with contemporary references to 40s culture. If you wanted 50s nostalgia, there was “Happy Days,” which at least acknowledged the existence of civilization in the misty distant past.
So: kids today may have no experience with these things, which is what the list suggests, but that’s different from being unaware of them. Not to say it’s all good: the notion of discrete eras has been eroded by the remix culture, which regards everything as ingredients to be reassembled into something that will be a meme for 11 days. Kids today seem as likely to know what something is a reference to as much as what it means in the first place. In the future I’ll bet the former grows at the expense of the latter.
Take a look at the list, and add your own ideas about what you didn't know when you were coming up. For late-late boomers like me, it can be summed up thus: we didn't know that life used to be really, really hard.
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Comments:
Jul '10
Re: Kids Today
Mere frivolity. What they need to think about is what they're going to need to know
Jun '10
Re: Kids Today
Born too late to do: As a kid, drive your family's horse and buggy over to your friend's house for a sleepover, and send the horse home by itself. Next day, take your friend's horse and buggy home, and then send that horse back by itself.
Jul '10
Re: Kids Today
I was born just early enough to watch my Volga German grandmother chase chickens around the farmyard with a cleaver. But not quite early enough to live with my parents and two older brothers in a war-surplus tent during the post-War housing shortage.
Man, America has come a long, long way since the early '50's. But something tells me we're perilously close to tent living and chicken-chasing all over again.
May '10
Re: Kids Today
Today's kids will never know the Goodyear Christmas Albums that we listened to all of December. They will also never get to see color TV for the first time after years of black and white.
They will however have their own list 50 years from now.
May '10
Re: Kids Today
Let's fisk a couple more:
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi Previn.
I dare you to find an 18 year old who has heard of Soon-Ye Previn.
22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
I thought it was a hate crime; did I miss this?
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
They all do now. They're called DVDs folks.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict.
Hardy-har.
49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.
We have a Poet Laureate? In the home of the brave?
56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.
Yeah. I'll never get over the great recession of '87.
58. Beethoven has always been a dog.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
I remember what Classical music and Renaissance art were like before Dan Quayle's reign of terror.
Good grief.
Jun '10
Re: Kids Today
What annoys me is that these pieces only focus on pop culture trivia. Not things like "Kids today, never had to worry about polio" or "Don't remember when women had to get their husbands to cosign on bank accounts" or even "don't remember what it was like when we thought the commies were going to nuke us".
Jul '10
Re: Kids Today
18 year olds email all the time, if my general chem class is any indication.
Jun '10
Re: Kids Today
"For late-late boomers like me, it can be summed up thus: we didn't know that life used to be really, really hard."
I was born at the height of the baby boom; that would be 1957. I knew from the stories on both sides of my family that life was very hard. My father grew up on a Pennsylvania chicken farm during the Great Depression. The house was electrified by 1930, but it didn't get indoor plumbing until 1940.
On my Polish side, my great grandfather died of pneumonia when his eldest was twelve. In those days the only social security that existed meant that dad's job in the factory was reserved for the son. My grandfather went to work at Ford Motor at age thirteen. His day started when the train from coal country passed by the house at 4 AM. The boys in the neighborhood climbed the moving train to throw down enough fuel to heat the modest row houses for the day. I remember a vivid story about a boy who slipped and was crushed under the train.
VDH makes similar points frequently in his essays. I do likewise in my own classroom.
Jul '10
Re: Kids Today
Kids today will never know what it was like to trudge ten feet through three inches of shag carpeting to change the television channel.
Re: Kids Today
When I tell my kids "you sound like a broken record" they have no idea what I'm talking about.
I was in an antique store with my son. I heard him yell, "Dad, what's this thing?" He was pointing at a typewriter.
Aug '10
Re: Kids Today
Well, shame on us if Beethoven is only a dog, Michelangelo only a virus. This list came from a college, which is truly embarrassing for Americans in general.
They ought to reconsider the formation of the list and try to ennumerate what these "timeless" children have accomplished or what can be expected of them.
Universal signature for "what time is it ?" ?
And is it icebox ?
May '10
Re: Kids Today
I beg Mr. Lileks' pardon, but I'll instead list things that my daughter will never know the joy of. (By "joy," I mean, in the words of Don Draper, "the pain of an old wound.")
Ooops there's my word limit.
May '10
Re: Kids Today
The impression I got from my elders was that the things I would "never experience" were not to be wished for. Things like the Great Depression, two World Wars, polio, and more. The things that really mattered and were worth keeping were being kept. Things like family, friends, good scotch and steaks on the grill. They were pleased to be handing over a world far better than the one they inherited. I'm happy to be knowing these things only through their stories.
My kids and I can share can the better music and movies of my youth quite easily, and we can speak daily via phones we carry with us. They also know a good deal more about Beethoven and Michelangelo than I did at their age, getting all that information through that same phone. If something is really worth keeping around people will do so. The rest is not to be mourned.
Jul '10
Re: Kids Today
They have never known:
Guitars with cords plugged into amps - everything is wireless.
Corded microphones
Headphones that aren't 'earbuds'
Music Videos on MTV
Carson's Tonight Show
Typewriters
Dot Matrix Printers
A new car with a carburetor
Do kids today have it easy? Hard to say. Each generation believes that the next has it easier. But, after all, that's what we want for our kids, isn't it? My generation didn't grow up during a depression, and then have to fight a war in Europe and the Pacific, but my Dad did. So I had it easier too.
And yes, Warner Brothers cartoons, and the Three Stooges, both provided a great deal of history for me, as well a prodded me to go learn some on my own.
May '10
Re: Kids Today
I was in the bank yesterday (which is something kids might not know about these days) and there was a flyer advertising a free foldable canvas cooler for anyone that opened a savings account. I turned to the cashier and said, "What happened to giving out toasters?" She laughed and I thought she got it, but then she said, "Toasters, that would be weird!"
Jun '10
Re: Kids Today
I'm fairly certain that most kids today don't remember when many of us walked 3-4 miles to school each day, and it was uphill both ways.
Aug '10
Re: Kids Today
@John Dietl "27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive. -- They all do now. They're called DVDs folks."
Don't forget that most "netbooks" completely lack "disk drives" and rely on USB memory keys for the majority of their storage. Sure, Starcraft II is on DVD-Rom, but no iTunes app requires a drive and apps are the future of a good deal of gaming.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost generation.
Do "kids today" even know who Beavis and Butt-head are, and isn't it today's "parents" who watched the show?
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby collection.
Sorry, I'm too busy watching "Perry the Platypus" to even know what Patti the Platypus is, and weren't Beanie Baby collections primarily the purview of middle aged women in the 90s?
Ahh! The Future Shock! I cannot handle it!
Guess I'll have to go back to reading John Brunner novels to cope.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/08/17/wear-wristwatch-use-e-mail-not-for-class-of-14-2/#ixzz0x4MMDC00