The problem with young people today is that they have no respect for seniors.
When I was a lad, young people looked up to their elders. Families respected the dignity of age and every house on the street was proud to have at least one wizened granny tucked away in the attic, cellar or stashed out back in the shed.
We didn’t dismiss seniors, we admired them. We viewed old folks as walking encyclopedias and knew that once you cracked their spines and blew the dust off them they were an open book of cultural history the whole family could enjoy.
You didn’t ask your nit-wit pals to teach you how to disarm a hobo, land a wife or survive a mustard gas attack – you went to your old granddad for some common sense and the straight damned goods. We understood that age equalled experience and that until you’d had a piece of German shrapnel lodged in your spleen or walked a mile in pair of cardboard shoes you didn’t know squat about nothing and less about life.
These days though, young people have no respect for seniors – and they most certainly don’t want our advice.
Try to do the decent thing and tell some moron young person to stop dressing like a damned fool and pull his pants up over his ass and you’re more likely to get a cuss in reply then you are a word of simple gratitude. To them, seniors are just an annoyance, an inconvenience or the butt of some rude joke.
In fact, they’ve turned the whole damned notion of respect upside down.
Rather than conferring it on seniors like God intended, young people today have some ill-conceived notion that we need to “earn” their respect. Earn it? What the hell is point of getting wrinkles, age spots and a damned stoop if doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of the young and immediately command their respect?
Besides, I’ve been paying into the respect kitty for 80 years and the way I see it, the time has come to start reaping some interest and letting the damned young people make a deposit or two.
These young people need to give their heads a shake and remember that respect is like a pension: it doesn’t apply to children, adults have to work for it and for seniors, it should be guaranteed.
They have no respect for seniors. That’s the problem with young people today.
Old people and young people think about very different things.
I’ve already examined the differences between the gray matter of old and young men here but now it’s time to take a look at the ladies.
Here’s what the inside of a typical granny’s noggin might look like:
Sensible stuff, damn it.
Compare that to the disturbing brainwaves of a damned female young person:
Startling differences I’m sure you’ll agree. And further proof that damned young people are nothing but trouble.
Just because I’m retired, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a busy life.
In addition to blogging about damned young people I’m also an active member of the Pleasantville train spotting association, alternate bingo caller at the local seniors centre and write a minimum of one angry letter a week.
The letter writing is particularly important. I view it as my civic responsibility to voice my concerns whenever I see an affront to decency or common sense.
Below is my roster for the upcoming month:
Letter to all of my Facebook Friends
Asking why the hell everyone is always carping about privacy settings and carrying on as though they’re the keeper of the nation’s nuclear launch codes and Mark Zuckerburg is some form of KGB master spy.
Call me naïve but it seems odd to me that people who have no compunction about posting updates about their battle with constipation or photos of themselves in ill-fitting swimwear are somehow worried about the potential wide-spread distribution of their email address or home phone number. Frankly, you’d think they’d like the additional attention.
Trust me, most people feel they know too much about you already. If you really want privacy go home, dim the lights, pull your blinds and unplug your damned computer.
Letter to Dr. Regina Benjamin, Surgeon General
Clearly articulating my concerns regarding assisted suicide. Oh sure, on the surface it may sound like a reasonable idea but it seems to me that some people are a little too enthusiastic about the “assisting” part – especially as it relates to us seniors.
I don’t want to go to the Doctor for a mole check and end up being encouraged to take a flu “plus” shot just so he can thin out the crowd in his waiting room and make his 1 p.m. tee time. Likewise, I don’t want my greedy nephews thrusting a vial of cyanide pills under my nose every time my impetigo acts up.
This is a dangerous game and if we’re not careful it won’t take long before family are treating old people like household pets and having them put down as soon as they get cataracts, lose their appetite or soil the front hall carpet.
Letter to Cooper Toogood, Editor, Pleasantville Weekly Chronicle
This will be a wide-ranging tirade on everything from their ever-shrinking fonts to the tasteless placement of the obituaries in the “lifestyle” section to the meaningless trash that they try to pass off as news these days. Articles advising me that wallpapering my headboard will revitalize my stagnant bedroom have about as much in common with real news as Anderson Cooper does.
It’s high time they cut out all the damned fluffy bumph and returned to hardboiled investigative reporting of dockyard corruption written by whiskey-swilling reporters with decent names like Scoop Henderson.
(I’ll also be pitching my Abigail Van Buren style advice column entitled “Dear CrAbby” but given my laundry list of complaints I’m not expecting a favourable reply.)
Letter to John G. Roberts, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
On the issue of abortion. I know it’s a thorny subject but in my view it’s time to put this discussion to rest and start focusing our jurisprudence on more important senior’s issues. Besides, anyone with a lick of sense knows life really begins at 70.
Since the country is pretty damned split on the issue the obvious solution is to consider abortion an acceptable medical procedure from Monday morning ‘til noon Thursday and a morally outrageous crime against nature from noon Thursday through to Sunday midnight. It’s perfect – nobody gets what they want and everybody gets partially pandered to. It’s an ineffectual compromise; the cornerstone of any good democracy.
(As an added bonus, those with an interest in haranguing young people can still do so; they’ll just need to shift their focus on beating teenagers over the head with placards when they’re contemplating fornication – not when they’re trying to address the unwanted fall-out.)
Letter to Mayoral Candidate Roland “Rolly” Forster
I’ll be wishing him well in the upcoming election but recommending that he tone down his rhetoric on global economic reform, climate change and foreign policy and try to remember that he’s running for small town mayor. He may wish to remind himself that his sphere of influence is largely limited to choosing the prize pig at the Fall Fair and determining whether or not the library will get a new book this year.
However, if he is serious about snagging the coveted seniors vote I’ll suggest he forget posturing about the debt ceiling and look into implementing some tough new teen curfew laws, introducing mandatory drug testing in high schools and consider bringing back police brutality.
Letter to the Editors of the Oxford English Dictionary
I will be respectfully suggesting that if they intend to continue adding moronic words like “muffintop”, “LoL” and “OMG” to their once respectable tome, they free up some room by removing existing words such as “credible”, “meaningful” and “scholarly.”
Few things chap my ass more than damned young people and their insistence on defacing our country with their moronic and subversive graffiti.
In my day, we didn’t have graffiti. We decorated our towns with American flags, billboards, bomb shelters and garden gnomes – tasteful and tidy symbols of everything our country stood for. We took pride in our cities, damn it, and would never have stood idly by while some gormless peckerhead with a sack full of spray cans defaced our streets with a combination of asinine illustrations, rude doodlings and half-baked political slogans.
If I had ever sprayed my initials on a public building my old dad would taken me out back and torn me a new aerosol – and he’d have been right to do so. The only tags we had were the ones sewn into our underpants and we made damned sure to keep them shielded from the public eye.
These days though it seems that every moron with a can of paint is free to “express” himself on the walls of the local bus shelter or spray his damned gang signature in 6-foot letters across the side of a train trestle. It’s a sad commentary that the walls of our once proud Main Streets now look like a cross a kindergartener’s finger painting and the inside of a men’s washroom stall. If these damned fools put half as much effort into getting their names on job applications or military enlistment forms as they do getting them on the sides of buildings the world would be a far better place.
But what galls me the most is that instead of rounding these hooligans up and hanging them in a public square we’re rounding them up and hanging them in art galleries. It’s disgraceful. Graffiti isn’t art! And even if it were, art isn’t meant to be splashed all over the streets getting in people’s way and distracting them from hard work and the pursuit of common decency – it’s supposed to be tucked away in museums where nobody but old ladies and school children has to see the damned stuff.
Mark my words, if we don’t stop this moronic plague soon it won’t be long before young people are entirely out of control and running around in packs spray-painting our Desotos, our family pets and senior citizens themselves. They’ll be adding fu Manchu moustaches to the Rushmore Presidents and “street art” to the frock of Lady Liberty.
The time has come to take away their spray cans, hand them some brushes and set them to work whitewashing a picket fence or two. As a nation, we’d be better off for it.
I’m beginning to think that the time has come to write off this current generation of young people as completely unfixable and focus our energies on preventing the next batch of sprogs from following in their path.
In support of this notion, I’ve written a series of instructional pre-school books designed to answer important questions and set the young ones down a road of decency, morality and proper American values.
Now I Understand Why I can’t go to Restaurants!
A wonderfully illustrated large print reader that explains to children exactly how their unrestrained behaviour and outlandish tantrums spoil the dining experience of everyone around them.
The story chronicles the misadventures of the Mr. and Mrs. Paddy O’Hamster and their 8 children who venture out for an ill-advised trip to a local restaurant. When the youngster’s shenanigans force the family to flee in embarrassment (and on an empty stomach!), Mrs and Mrs. O’Hamster are forced to make a difficult decision and elect to eat their own young!
Mommy, why do you have a tattoo on your Back? 
In gentle language and with cute illustrations, this book explains how during a tequila and carrot fuelled misadventure, Mrs. Penny Bunny made a poor decision that resulted in permanent disfigurement and a life of heady regret.
Designed as a cautionary tale for curious toddlers the book helps parents in deterring their children from making the same questionable life choices they did.
Also in this series “Daddy will be back in 7 to 10” and “I Never Caught his Last Name.”
The ABCs of Respectable Middle Class Values
“C is for conformity which keeps us all the same / D is for the decency that shields us all from shame”
It’s never too early to start beating notions of morality into the heads of young people and reminding them that in addition to standing for Apple, “A” also stands for America!
This pragmatic and patriotic early-reader brings home the concepts of decent middle class values using light verse and heavy messaging. A must for any rambunctious child with a stubborn streak and a strong imagination.
“M is for the marriage that must last until you die / N is for normality, a trait for which we strive”
The Very Horny Caterpillar
The story follows a young caterpillar who spends an entire week feeding his depraved carnal appetites. Building from his first sexual curiosity to self-manipulation to the loss of his virginity to random acts of perversity behind the Hostess Chip rack at the 7-11, there is no act of obscenity that the very horny caterpillar will not try and no one he will not attempt to mount.
At the conclusion, the very horny caterpillar becomes unwell, cocoons himself and emerges reborn and with a new sense of morality and a permanent cold sore.
Dick and Jane are Morbidly Obese
A new twist on an old classic, our modern day Dick and Jane eschew exercise and spend their days guzzling soda, scarfing down curly fries, sexting each other and giving supertokes to their dog Spot.
Naturally, it isn’t long before their gluttony and sedentary lifestyle leads to unfortunate consequences like a sweatpant-only wardrobe, type 2 diabetes and early onset heart disease.
See Dick.
Dick loves to Eat.
Dick once ate an entire Ham.
Eat, Dick, Eat.
ONE, TWO, THREE…Learning to Count Suspicious Neighbors!
“Finally, a book I can read with grandma!”
Counting can be fun! Especially when it’s in aid of Homeland Security.
This important pre-school classic makes learning to count fun while also helping teach your child how to be vigilant in the search for cannibas grow-ops, potential terror cells, communist operatives and other clear and present neighbourhood dangers.
Parents and children alike can enjoy over 2 dozen workbook exercises including counting and recording out-of-state licence plates, counting the number of questionable visitors next door and noting the times of their arrival and departure
I Can Earn My Keep!
A beautifully illustrated children’s book that disabuses youngsters of their notions of entitlement and promotes personal responsibility by encouraging them to assume progressively more challenging household tasks.
Example chapters include: “I can make my bed!”, “I can wax the floors!” and “I can pull a moldboard plow!”
Coming next in my little readers series:
“The Infected Piercing Pop Up Book”
“Decent-Indecent: A Spot the Differences Book”
“Clifford: The Big Red Menace”
“Hooray! I’m Going to Military School”
“Let’s Leave Grandpa Alone”
And much, much more.
The Problem with Young People Today Is... 