Kids Today

May Day brought some old fogies out to talk online about May poles and how we used to wrap them in colored ribbons. At my elementary school, we had a music teacher, Mrs. Montoya, an energetic love of a woman whom I remember most fondly for her May poles. She used colored crepe paper, probably twenty or more strips attached to the top of the pole. Then she would ask the class to make a circle around the pole. Then each child would walk to the steamers and take one and move back to the outer circle. The music would start and we would walk. All this was rehearsed, of course, and at first it must have been chaos, because half of us had to walk one way, duck under then rise above, and the other half do the same thing going the other way in order for the ribbons to end up wound around the pole in a beautiful display of color. I remember it being outside with chairs set up for parents to come and watch. Sadly, I don’t remember what music she played, but I remember being dressed up and have polished white shoes. Must have been in fourth or fifth grade.

It’s one of those childhood memories we older folks like to hold up to say how nice things were then, how nice we were, how nice our parents were, what a great world we lived in. Which in turn helps some among us to complain about how awful kids are today. And that happened. One of my old friends said all kids do today is protest. Of course she’s a Trump fan. She hates protests. Kids who are protesting want not to be in fear of their lives when they go to school. I want that for them, too. I have grandchildren who aren’t even in school yet, but I can’t help but be fearful for them. How much worse can things get? What’s to be done? It doesn’t seem, honestly, that any amount of gun control will stop people (mostly young white men) from being so angry, so unhinged with their anger. I mean, I’m for gun safety, for background checks. It should be hard for someone to buy a gun, really hard. At least as hard as it is to get an abortion. There should be a waiting period to give an angry person time to re-think his decision. Will that stop the violence? Of course not. A lot of the attacks are well-planned, take time and careful preparation, and the guns would have been purchased regardless or any amount of gun laws. How do we stop them? Why is there so much hatred now? Have we just been a world of war and retribution and greed and “I’m right and you’re wrong” for too long to come back from it? Has the “anything goes” from our President influenced young people to believe if he can have that attitude, that total lack of accountability and morality, it’s okay for them, too? Do we need to be erased from the face of the earth for a do-over? It looks like Mother Nature might have that in mind, and who can blame her? We have been such poor stewards of this wonderful planet. We deserve what we get.

My son wants me to realize that things used to be worse. That no matter how bad I see this reality, it was once worse. I wasn’t alive then, so it’s hard to imagine, but people were once thrown into debtor’s prisons that were simply dungeons. They were left there to starve for years. Or they were crucified. People had their hands cut off for theft. People–mostly women–were burned at the stake for being strange, hearing voices. Black men were hanged (legally) from trees and eviscerated for nodding to a white woman. Brothers fought and killed brothers in our civil war. Disparity was everywhere; women were property, so were their children. Racism was accepted. So, okay, things were once unthinkably horrific–I get it.

But I’m still alarmed about the world I’m living in now and a lot of the people I’m living here with. What about you?