The kids are alright
By Ivan Morgan
I have been having what I call a “70’s crisis.” People I haven’t seen since that decade are popping back into my life. It’s been freaking me out. I’ve never been a reflective person; the past is past, all we really have is the future.
Yet I suddenly find myself wallowing in my distant past.
I was at a retail outlet in a Paradise strip mall on a recent Friday night. The staff were kids 18 to 23 years old. Dwelling on my own youth has made me interested in young people today. My kids are in their 30s and 40s. I wanted to talk to kids the age I was in the 1970s. As I thought more about my gloriously misspent youth, I became curious about those currently in theirs.
So, I struck up a conversation with the kids working in the store, asking about their world. When you start talking, you find young people are interesting. It’s a cliché but also true – theirs is a different world from the one we faced as kids.
As we talked, I noticed the endless stream of “classic rock” blaring over the PA. Our music, not theirs. In my day it was Muzak, what we called elevator music, filling the store with noise pollution. Polite as they were about not minding the music, I think they hear classic rock as annoying background elevator tunes.
What, you say? Classic rock isn’t Muzak! It’s good music! So was Big Band. Why do we assume kids today want to listen to it? They want to listen to their own music, not our rusty, dusty old tunes. But at work you don’t pick the tunes. Corporate does.
They complained their boss texted too much work for them to do. Read that sentence again.
Then there is the digital revolution they are coming of age in. Back in the 1970’s I didn’t take pictures, but apparently some took lots, and recently I am seeing for the first time in almost 50 years images of my saucy youthful self. It’s sobering.
When I was a wild young lad there were no digital cameras, cell phones or video, and no social media to record my often stupid, boorish behaviour. Nowadays it’s possible – even likely – that every stupid thing ever done by anyone is recorded and is available for the rest of time. This is a reality for young people today. Makes my blood run cold just thinking about it.
Do a stupid thing, and everyone can see it on TikTok or Insta. Makes for a very different world.
Last year at a buddy’s wake we reminisced about stupid stuff we all did as lads. Stupid funny stuff and stupid, stupid stuff. We were just boring old farts reminiscing. Imagine if we had video of it all. Decades from now, when today’s youth are old and stiff and grey, will they crowd around at wakes watching colour video of Mikey puking all over his grandmother?
I’m not a person who worries about future generations. If you are, let me tell you about another group of young people I met hiking in the hills. I watched some young people on mountain bikes come down what could reasonably be described as a long very steep rock cliff.
I met up with them at the bottom with a strange mixture of horror and awe. They were breathless with exhilaration. I asked one of them if what I just saw wasn’t really biking, more a controlled fall on two wheels.
Young fellow in a helmet looked at me and laughed. “Yeah,” was all he said. They all laughed. Not one of them yet 20 years old.
This is part of an elaborate mountain bike trail they built by themselves, for themselves, deliberately adding this cliff feature. They were enterprising, full of energy and life, and tough. I told them as an old skipper I had trouble getting down the thing on two legs. One laughingly allowed that it was easier on a bike.
Ah, youth.
If these young people are the future, then the future is in good hands. As we were talking one of them asked me if I had a mountain bike. I allowed I did.
So why not give it a try, he asked?
Fixing him with a grandfatherly smile, I told him I would were I 18, but if I tried it now there would be only one word to describe the experience.
Medevac.
Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com