Differences of Times
Michael Adams
1997, 1999
There is a great misconception of things. Ask a person if things now are just as easy as they were 20 years ago. I bet that if you ask an adult who grew up at that time, they will say things are just as easy now as they were then.
Wrong.
This is a poor misconception, and this can be agreed upon by my fellow peers. As we assume the roles of our progenitors, we find ourselves to be quite restricted. My dad says he shelled peas, mowed yards, and ushered movies as a teenager. Well, I can't do all that: There are no pea growers here; there are maybe 20-odd lawn-care companies doing the same job, plus all the other parents proceeding their kids into yard work; and you can't work at a movie theater until your 18 (funny, since the highest age restriction is 17), now that movies are so "corrupting family values." Well, if I got no job, I might as well go be a punk kid, and be the real enemy.
I live right behind a shopping plaza. Can't get work there. For one thing, most of the jobs require 18 year olds, either because there's heavy lifting, necessary education, and "unsafe" equipment. Another reason, there is the lack of jobs I can do agewise: 4 businesses at best, and all of these are vied for by dozens of other fellow peers and adults. And I don't have a license to drive on my own yet, so I can't really expand my job range: the next plaza is a 20 minute one-way bicycle ride, and half of them would be in darkness.
Another thing to point out is the simultaneous shielding and promoting of things. When one minor incident occurs, all the family-values people cry out "foul" and have some more restrictions placed upon us. They assume all of us teens are stupid, only half really are. Since we can't take care of ourselves, we can't work, and we can only watch "Barney & Friends" on TV, because anything else is going to corrupt us. We can't go out at night because 10 decent people acted accordingly and 1 corrupted youth made reason to cry foul. We can eat chicken at home, and with knives, but at school, all the "good" kids have to be suspended and arrested for doing what they were taught; Oh no, they were going to stab somebody! If you take an aspirin, you are going to do heroin, or marijuana, and must be punished as you were doing such. You can't even date much anymore: you're going to make the other pregnant and become a social troll. Especially 18's dating 19's: it's illegal (Funny, since only 100 years ago, 13's married 20's).
I swear (And no, I don't use "cuss" words, something done by 98% of my fellow peers) that people are being moronic. They cry out that we need guidance. Yes, we do need it, but we don't have to become criminals for minor atrocities. Besides, if you become a criminal, you're cutoff from good education, and become more likely to have a messed-up life. That dosen't matter, "you must be protected" they say. Forget that we're being both cutoff and protected, everything's gonna work fine! Well, things aren't as easy as they were, and if anything, they've been ruined beyond repair!
THE WHINERS OF SOCIETY CREATE THE SAME PROBLEMS THEY VOW TO DESTROY!!! STOP SHIELDING US SO MUCH!!!
Amendment; January 1999
Well, in April 1998, I found work at the shopping plaza: a bagger at Winn-Dixie the past nine months. I got only 1 pay raise: $0.10 above the meager start at minimum wage ($5.15/hr.). My schedule's unstable; my work is grueling; I've seen half my co-workers leave; and I've been passed up for "promotion" to stocking on several occasions, for it seems I will have better use in other departments when I reach age 18 in four months. Luckily, two things have happened: one, a full-time summer job with the city (this succeeding the eight weeks of 20 hr./week employment at City Hall) that had me doing computer work and helping out with the various departments at the Maintenence Compound for six weeks; the other is the fact that I will be 18 in four months, and thus free of some of the cursed stigma mentioned above. However, had I not ties with the City, nor my employ at Winn-Dixie, I would be in a far worse position. I am off of allowance, and I drive to school with the car's only tie to my parents are in the title and the insurance. But I wish things were better: my mind can do far more than let me haul carts, scrub toilets, and bow down before my superiors on the account not of my intelligence, but of my pathetic age. It seems as though I was right all along...
Amendment; March 1999
Stress mounts. Seems there's this obsession with grades prevalent. Hell, people say I'm overloaded and stressed out, yet keep on adding more work. And I saw a piece of Reader's Digest saying "take away the calculators." But if I'm stressed out, is more work going to help? And if we lose our calcs., are we supposed to memorize square roots and stuff found in trig. tables; if we're going to use tables, and do long tests in shorter time than math would take in an old 8-hour "RR&R" school, we might as well have the grubby things.
I find "double-standard discipline" very interesting. "I'll be glad if you ever get an F" becomes "What the *=-\ is that F doing on your report card." "Take all the AP classes" becomes "you can't handle it all." "Go get a job" becomes "stop working on work and work on school." And the funny thing is that the "experts" (our parents) constantly switch back and forth; it's amazing only people such as myself are mentally screwed-up (Please: no lectures on profanity) from it all.
We, the teenage populous, have been condemned to some sort of logistical Hell. The weird part is that we're told to do well, yet we are accused of slacking off and causing a multitude of crimes. Please... give us a break!