LIFE

This isn’t just about me; it’s about many of us who grew up 50-60 years ago. Parents in those days loved their kids just as much as parents do today but they had a different way of making you step up to the plate. They didn’t have the same threats to barter with you for your behavior, as parents do today. They couldn’t take away your phone or your x-box because we didn’t have one. They couldn’t take away your allowance because we didn’t get one. So instead they gave us a common sense approach to what would be expected of us in today’s world if we were going to be successful. They in effect showed us how to be responsible. When I was fourteen years old, I got a job at a chicken hatchery-cleaning chicken poop out of cages. I was paid a dime an hour. I stunk so bad when I got home my mom made me clean up in the yard with soap and the garden hose. When I was fifteen I had a paper route that got me up at five thirty in the morning to deliver papers before school. I had a canvas bag I wore over my shoulder with about fifty papers in it and I walked the 3-mile route in the winter, no matter the weather. No parent to drive me. I made a couple of bucks a week. When I was seventeen I got a job in a drug store stocking shelves and cleaning the floors. I was ecstatic, as I got seventy-five cents an hour. But in turn I had few friends or social life and was left out of most after school activities. When I graduated from high school my father told me to get a job and move out. I thought about college but there was no money for tuition so I went to work in a Machine shop where I made good money but hated the work. Eventually I found a job I liked and life was good after that. When I was in my fifties I had a disagreement with a supervisor and I retaliated by not talking to her. She told me I had too much foolish pride. I told her I did have a lot of pride but it wasn’t foolish pride because I earned every bit of pride I had. I am sure if she knew my story and how I had got where I was, she would have understood. To those of you who have never worked for a living, or are still living off your parents, the thing you are missing out on the most in today’s world, is your own self worth. My friends tell me the reason things are, like they are today, is it’s just a different world now days. I want to say “duh.” That’s an excuse, not a reason. There’s a difference. A reason is usually a valid justification for doing what you are doing. An excuse is all to often just your interpretation of why you don’t want to do things and not always based on facts. I fully realize this isn’t about everyone, but it s about enough people to cause concern and a big problem here in the nation and in our lake country. There is a help wanted poster in just about every business I go by. Businesses that relied on young people to work their summers in this resort community. Some of them are going out of business. Not for a lack of interest in their product. Instead, for a lack of people to work for them. When I was young there were just as many businesses that needed help, but jobs were hard to find. Everybody wanted a job and everybody’s parents wanted their kids to work and it wasn’t always because they were poor. It was because they wanted their kids to be responsible. The blame goes to the parents.