Thursday, September 17, 2015

I used to have to walk to school in three feet of snow… uphill!

I remember being a kid and listening to all the "old" people talk about how horrible they had it and how easy we have it.  There were always stories about how they had to walk to school, in the snow, up hill, without boots, while wresting a bear.  Okay, so maybe there was never really a bear, but the stories always seemed to get bigger and bigger and their hardships worse and worse.



Fast forward to 2015 and things haven't changed much as far as the older (I think that means me) generation telling the younger generation that they are all a bunch of whimps!  If I have to hear one more, when I was a kid we used to lay in the back of a station wagon unbuckled and nothing ever happened to me, I may have to throat punch someone.  That statement drives me crazy, yet every time someone talks about the importance of carseats, and how long kids should be in them, and the importance of keeping your kids in the backseat as long as possible, there is always some idiot spouting on about how they used to hang out the window of their parents Ford Pinto and nothing ever happened to them.  I of course always bite my tongue since there is no getting through to an idiot and I know I'd just be wasting my precious time on this earth to point out the obvious…  they never got into an accident obviously while riding shotgun on the highway with no seatbelt, because if they had, I can promise I wouldn't be listening to them ramble on about how "soft" kids are today because they would most likely be dead!  These people never think of the fact that so many other kids didn't get so "lucky" and thats why there are seatbelt laws and super safe carseats, I'm telling you, it's infuriating!


Unfortunately it's doesn't stop with just carseats.  Every time school is canceled due to snow or the few times it's been due to heat, just pop onto any social media site and you'll see all the self absorbed a-holes once again spouting on about how they used to go to school during blizzards and how they NEVER got out of school for heat.  For one I think people have long term memory loss or they have just been hanging out with the people that thought they went to school while wrestling a bear.  I started kindergarten in 1981 (back in the olden' days if you ask my kids), and school got canceled a lot due to snow.  I can remember several times they didn't cancel it in the morning and had us get out mid-day (early) during a raging snowstorm and it was dangerous.  I was even involved in a pretty bad bus accident due to the snow/ice.  

I wish these people would realize that perhaps some of us learned from mistakes that were made in the past, mistakes that caused injuries and undue hardships and that there is no reason to make those same mistakes with our own kids.  It's not about making kids "tough" or "soft" it's about realizing that certain things sucked for us and maybe we can make it a little bit better for our kids, isn't that what part of parenting is about, giving your kids a better life then you had.  I'm not talking about giving them everything they want, I am just talking about realizing things that hurt or could of hurt us as children and making it better for our own.  And if your one of those people that thinks we making things too easy on our kids then you either had nothing ever bad happen to you or you had a lot bad happen to you and for some reason think your kids need bad things to happen to them to be a strong person, which I don't think is true.