This generation has all kinds of neat gadgets - everything from video games to home computers. They have technology we couldn't imagine. We thought we were in high cotton if we had a calculator. Some kids have a selection of 500 channels on the television in their bedroom. When I was a kid, most people only had one TV and you were lucky to get more than one station. You considered to be truly fortunate if you somehow managed to get all three stations. Let's be honest, no matter where you lived, there were only three stations (if you don't count PBS and few people did or do). If it wasn't on NBC, CBS, or ABC - it wasn't on TV. More than that, programming for TV is different today. I can remember when Saturday mornings were devoted to cartoons only and we all looked forward to every September when the new cartoons would debut. Today, Saturday mornings are devoted to news shows and infomercials - cartoons have become the domain of cable. And kids can choose between cartoons, movies, and sports. If the Porter Waggoner Show came on, we were stuck with it.
Kids today have more than improved technology - they have improvements on everything. Even the breakfast cereal is geared toward a more healthy lifestyle. They have mandatory seat belt and child restraint laws. On the surface, it looks like they have so much better than we did. I remind you, appearances can be deceiving.
They also have so many more things we didn't have. School shootings. Rampant childhood obesity. Widespread drug use. The list goes on and on.
I realize the good old days might not have been as good as we like to remember, but I do believe they were a little better than what most children face today. No, we didn't have video games and home computers. We had board games like Monopoly(r) and we learned to count money and figure numbers without a computer doing it for us. Childhood obesity wasn't a problem because our summers were spent outdoors playing sports or (gasp!) politically incorrect games like "Cowboys and Indians." We had toy guns that were made to look as authentic as possible and yet no one ever actually took a real gun to school and shot anyone.
We had cereal like Sugar Smacks(r) that came with a real toy inside, not a coupon for some type of fiber bar. We had candy cigarettes and chewing gum cigars. With all of the sugar in our bodies, we not only didn't need drugs, there wasn't any room for them.
We knew that certain nights meant certain TV shows - Sunday night was The Wonderful World of Disney and Bonanza. Remote control meant my dad telling one of us to turn the dial on the TV.
We didn't have cell phones. We had dial telephones and party-lines.
Baseball was "The Game of the Week" on NBC on Saturday afternoon and the World Series was a big deal, even if games were played on weekday afternoons. We didn't have ESPN, superstations, and several games to choose from each night. And somehow, baseball - like all sports - was better then. The greatest football games ever played did not take place in a stadium but in the yard beside my house. Basketball meant a hoop with a torn net on a dirt court. We didn't have sports drinks - water did fine. And we didn't know what steroids were - we would have probably thought it something from outer space.
We didn't have the Internet to search for entertainment and possibly poison our minds with filth. We had real books (in some cases comic books) to fire our imagination and develop our thought process.
So yes, kids today have many things we didn't. But somewhere along the way, between our childhood and theirs, we lost something. Call it innocence or the perception of innocence - either way, it's gone and it's not coming back. And that's a shame.
Richard Evans is Editor of the Claiborne Progress
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