Who Do I Think I Am??

This one's about that way it was versus the way it is.

THE PROMPT: "Name three advantages that kids born these days have over older generations. Then, name three advantages that older generations have over kids born these days."

Good evening everyone! Interesting prompt today...I'm sure everyone's got a lot of opinions regarding the generational debate. Allow me to share my take.

"Name three advantages that kids born these days have over older generations."

Let's state the obvious one right off the bat, shall we? I'm sure everyone else has pulled this card...technology. Kids these days are practically born with smartphones and earbuds. I didn't see a computer in my school until I was in 4th grade. And it was this monstrous thing that went by the name "Apple 2e". It had the black screen with the green font, used floppy discs that were square, flat and fairly large. And there was no internet, nor was there a computer network. So transferring files from computer to computer meant saving your document to a floppy and changing machines. These computers didn't even have a desktop, so each time you wanted to run a program, you had to have that program's diskette. Today? Everything you need is already on your laptop for the most part, with one-click access. The efficiency allows kids these days to be more productive.

And that's just one example of technology. I could go on about cars, cell phones, tv's, etc... but you get the point.

Choice. Kids today have more choices and options than people did back in the day. All you need to do is go to the big super mega grocery mini-mall in your neighborhood. When I was a kid, grocery stores were just that...a place to buy groceries. They were small, there were more of them, and they really seemed fit to serve the immediate neighborhood they were in. Then the eighties and nineties happened, and everything had to get bigger, and everything had to come in different flavors, scents, varieties or sizes, so grocery stores got bigger. They closed the smaller ones down, expanded the aisles, and were made to serve almost the entire city.

I often cite toothpaste as an example. It only came in mint or cinnamon flavor when I was a kid. It was a paste, not a gel. It came in a tube, and that was it. And there were maybe six brands to choose from. Now, there's multiple flavors for each different type of toothpaste each brand carries. Gels, pastes, gel/paste hybrids, whiteners, all sorts of crap. And it's like that for rice, laundry detergent, gum, soda, deodorant, you name it. There's just so many more options for almost every consumable product these days.

And my final thought about this generation? It's no different than the ones before them in this respect, but it's still an advantage. Every generation that comes around will have the chance to learn from the mistakes of the generations before them. And with that, they'll be able to hopefully leave the world a better place than the one they inherited.

Name three advantages that older generations have over kids born these days.

Older generations can write proper letters. That's not to say future generations will be dumber, but the use of proper grammar and spelling has really taken a slide. This I assume is primarily in the rise of texting, where you try to jam as many thoughts into a box of 140 characters. I've made this rant before, but I'd seriously like to beat the person who invented "LOL" and subsequently made it ok for intelligent individuals to shorten every phrase into an abbreviation. WTF!

Family members spent a lot more time together, because a lot of the time, that's all they had was each other. There was maybe one tv in the house, and it maybe got more than five channels. They all sat at the dinner table and conversed. They did more outside of the home together also, probably because there weren't as many opportunities for kids outside of the home as there are today. More parents stayed together longer also, which generally had a more positive effect.

I'm not saying that this is limited to any particular generation, or that it won't happen in the future, but I think kids are handed things a lot more these days than we ever had handed to us. We were taught how to work for things and how to earn things. Through generations before us, some who struggled mightily, we learned perseverance. The values my parents and grandparents learned through growing up as a direct or indirect result of The Great Depression will only last for so long until it's replaced by those who grew up with parents who've said, "We struggled growing up so that you wouldn't have to". And this is solely my opinion, but I believe a lot of kids have a bigger sense of entitlement when it comes to a lot of things. And that has a lot to do with what they see on tv and in magazines and online. Kids are getting more things faster and younger, and more kids see that and want more, and it's a race for the newest, coolest "it" thing to have. For my generation, it was sneakers. Now, it's cell phones, laptops and tablets, and so much more.

MUSICAL BREAK!!

You'll understand why I'm going with this band shortly. This is from my favorite album of theirs.

VITAL STATS:

So, we made a trip to Consumer's Beverages today to take back some bottles. And along the way I may have made a life-altering discovery. After the returns were taken care of, I wanted to look around a little. And I found a flavorful little number by Lagunitas, called Wilco Tango Foxtrot . I had never even heard of this! It was reminiscent of my search for Pearl Jam Faithfull Ale...only much cheaper. The label reads "A Malty, Robust, Jobless Recovery Ale" . And the "W" in Wilco, "T" in Tango, and "F" in Foxtrot on the label all match up on the left side, so it reads WTF going down.

Of course, the day went downhill from there. justjessica1 had to schedule an emergency chiropractor appointment that really wasn't near anywhere else on the itinerary, so we got that in after we went to Best Buy. The face on her phone started coming unglued a few weeks ago, and it was only five weeks old. Best Buy totally screwed her. They sent the phone out, sent back a refurbished phone, and never bothered to call her to tell her it was in. And this all happened over a few weeks (they did manage to give her a loaner phone to use). But what they don't tell you is if they have to send you a refurb, it voids your manufacturer's warranty because it's not your original phone. She got a pretty lousy runaround from the customer service rep there today as well...when we got in the car she said "I'm gonna be writin' some letters (sentence edited to make it sound more modern) sendin' some emails when I get home. She maintains that her phone was defective and it should either have been fixed or replaced with a brand new phone. I still think that had she not dropped it in Wegmans the day before, that'd be one hour of my day today I could've killed more constructively.

Speaking of Wegmans, we shop there pretty regularly. But because of that emergency chiro appointment, I figured I'd save time and just drop her off while I did the grocery shopping. Big mistake. See, I'm familiar with one Wegmans...and the one by her doctor's office is laid out very differently than the ones by our house. A trip to get five or six items would've maybe taken 10 minutes. This time? A lot longer.

Ok folks, I've said enough for one day. I'm gonna enjoy my Wilco beverage and read a little bit, and see what happens from there. Peace, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!