If this generation’s kids could experience anything from the past, what would you wish for them and why?
By: Jack Larrick
Inflated prices. High United States debt. You know, the usual. At least, that is, for this generation. In the one or two generations before us kids, that was not the case. Back then, my elders say they remember getting candy for dirt cheap prices, and gas was less than a dollar per gallon. That is what we need. An economy without worry of needing to manage every expense here and every expense there. No longer can you walk out and get anything unless you are among the rich.
We kids need to be able to experience a nation that thrives and is not trillions of dollars in debt. All we mainly hear about these days is the President’s plans to help our struggling economy. We have become so used to a bad economy and country that a turnaround would be huge. Even though some would take it for granted, many kids and teens would see it as a window of opportunity for our nation to climb out and make everything back to old times again. This is what this generation’s kids need and deserve to experience from the past.
By Ms. Vandeventer
When I was a little girl, life was simple. My friends and I would fly along on our bicycles from dawn to dusk. My mother’s voice would resonate through the neighborhood when it was time for lunch, and she never worried about my safety. When I was a teenager, I traded the bike for a car, or borrowed my parents’. My friends and I were not in the group that used drugs, so my parents didn’t have to worry about that either. Back then it was rare for drug use to cross that line. Cell phones were nonexistent. When I zoomed off on my bike or later in my car, I couldn’t text anyone. Kids had time to think. Instead of texting, we all gathered in high school at a local favorite hangout, and we talked to each other. And when we went home, 878 of my closest “friends” didn’t join me. We didn’t have Facebook or computers, for that matter. We had Bubba’s SoftServe Ice Cream devoured in the wonderful company of a dozen close friends. In high school, right before the era of big hair, we took some tough classes from tough teachers, but we respected them and were humble and learned. We didn’t have AP classes in third grade yet, and it was nice. We respected our parents and had a little dose of healthy fear sometimes. Our music wasn’t filled with the worst language had to offer, and neither was our world. It was fresh and clean, at least it seemed to me back then. New York wasn’t a city with a memorial at the World Trade Center. Kids were innocent longer, or most of us at least had that luxury.
So, Jack, what do I wish your generation had from mine? I wish you didn’t have the ability to text every emotion the minute it was felt. Your generation doesn’t have time to allow them to ebb away. I wish your music was just fun and uplifting, not saturated with vulgarity. And I wish your generation knew the difference. I wish you could have time to learn your multiplication tables and practice using them before you became dependent upon a calculator that was forced into a hand too small to hold it. I wish bad people hadn’t multiplied so your world would be secure. I wish that you, too, could take that college degree and get a bunch of job offers because of the strength of the economy. But most of all, Jack, I wish for your generation the freedom to be innocent a little longer, to just slow down and experience the simple joys of life... like a cone of soft serve Bubba’s ice cream on a hot, sticky, wonderful summer’s night with the smiling moon looking down upon you and a dozen close friends. And I wish for you that you all know just how wonderful you truly are, Jack.