I'm going to go out on a limb and bet there's one thing about "kids today" that makes every adult wring their hands and demand to know "where are their parents?" It's not the same for everyone, I get that. But for me, it's the headphones.
I don't care what they look like. Buds. Cuffs. Fuzzy. Sleek. When I see a teenager walking around town plugged into their music maker instead of paying attention to the world around them, I have to hold myself back from walking over and plucking that crap right off their head.
And if you think I'm just some cranky old biddy, you're right! But perhaps you'll join me in a glass of Metamucil when you hear that the latest kid lying in a hospital bed was put there by a train? A train that hit him because he was too busy listening to his music to notice Thomas the Tank's buddy was roaring down the tracks -- even though the driver was slamming on the horn? Gotcha!
The 14-year-old from the Detroit area of Michigan is in serious condition, and he's been giving me some serious flashbacks to my own stupid teenage days. Only I was 15, and instead of a train it was a car. And instead of a fancy schmancy iPod, I had my brand spankin' new discman (memba those?) spinning on my hip.
I was fine. Am fine. I was -- and am -- also awfully lucky. Because the driver was on my parents' narrow back road and could see a car coming at her from the front (the one I saw, which made me move to grab my dog, not noticing the car coming up BEHIND me because of the tunes in my ears), she was moving slow. Mothers of little girls in the same school, these days we even joke about our weird "how we met" story.
But you don't get hit by a car and not learn your lesson (or at least I don't). I love music, but it is not worth my life or even just the extremely painful nights spent trying to get comfortable when one side of your bod is black and blue. So yeah, that's my "kids these days" story. I hate me some headphones. And when I hear kids are getting hit by TRAINS, I don't feel like a sanctimommy telling other parents they need to get their act in gear and teach their kids to shut it off in public. I feel like I'm doing a public service.
Do you let your kids go out with those infernal things clamped over their ears?
Image by Jeanne Sager