One of the many indicators that inform me of my perpetual maturation process, aside from realizing I own a champagne-colored car and have developed a hankering for fiber-rich cereals, is my increasing disgust with the youth of today and doomful outlook on what our world is coming to. This doomfulness led to thinking, the thinking led to contemplation, the contemplation led to a bowl of Grape-Nuts, and the Grape-Nuts led to this conclusion: I feel the youth of today are blathering idiots who are bound to wreck everything. My parents felt that way about the youth of their day. Their parents also, and their parents before them, back to back to the time Adam yelled “Cain! Abel! So help me, if I have to come back there…” And yet the world is not wrecked (speaking in very general terms here). Mankind has continued to flourish, evolve, improve, advance, and make shinier things year after year, century after century. We have computers, planes, pop-tarts, Wi-Fi, mass-produced banjos – is this not the sign of an advanced civilization? Do I really think that one generation of incessant-texting grammar-slaying iPod-wearing disrespectful illiterate chubby kids whose reference for reality is MTV and celebrity gossip could really wreck everything? Nope. We’re gonna be fine. These kids are sharp cookies. They’re the perfect choice to be the decision makers of the future. Once they grasp the opportunity available to them, the knowledge at their fingertips, the chances afforded them to change the entire world (imagine! One person can change the entire world! You know how unlikely that was just 20 years ago?), once they realize these things they will be an unstoppable force. Who better, I ask you. I don’t claim to understand them. I don’t pretend to always like them. But I’ll do what I can to support them, because I’m placing a lot of hope in the kids these days.
