Where Have All The Children Gone

When many of us were in high school, we towed the line or else the wrath of the instructors and parents were visited upon our heads. Oh there were fights and wrestling outside class hours, but there were no knives or guns in double digit quantities. Most of the time the biggest concerns involved who dated who, who had new clothes, what make-up was the best, who stole whose girl or boy friend, who held what position on which team and who were we to massacre on the field on Friday nights. Remember that Fridays were group nights and Saturdays were date nights. And for the most part, nobody took their life in their hands going out at night.

It seemed to me it began changing when the war escalated and so many of out young men were drafted. Then as if a disease insidious and stealthy took over and the drugs abounded. Music changed to very dark lyrics and groups more likely than not dropped in and dropped out on Fridays. Kids from the sixties grew up and had kids of the late seventies and eighties. We gave our kids freedom we never experienced. Most of us had to work to make ends meet for the family. Schools changed. People sued schools over discipline. Groups became gangs, dropping out took over. Students ran roughshod over the entire place. Studying was optional. Weapons appeared. Fights abounded.

Now we have schools run by committee. No discipline. This mess has produced a plethora of children on antidepressants and Ritalin. Weapons appear in grade schools. Shootings, gang warfare, drive by shootings, mass killings at schools followed by suicide. Abductions and urban flight have made every parent personally deliver children to school or to the buses. No one walks to class any more. Children and parents retain the umbilical connection by cell phone.

We had a school fro the inner city move to a brand new building complex in suburbia in an attempt to "spread the wealth" I guess. children from the old area were to mingle with the children from the new area and they would all "take a house by the sea together" so to speak. These are high school age children. What has happened in the first year of operation is gang fights and school warfare. Many new area kids were pulled by parents and sent to private school. These kids are our grand kids now. We are so ready to pull a race card on either side, get the news involved, solve the problems with law suits, handicapping the schools to where no discipline is found. This school was built right next door to a small police district office. Some of the police moonlight as unarmed guards at the school. A fight broke out an it was the guard who was beaten to a bloody pulp and sent to the hospital and not a student. No police arms were used but plenty of guns and knives appeared on the scene.
Righteous indignation prevailed, firings happened, suits were issued, and next year, they will begin bringing in freshman and sophomores. As a consequence, more people from the neighborhood could not sell their massive housed fast enough leaving many "for lease" golf course front homes.

It is no wonder home schooling abounds. But with home schooling, where is the socialization to be learned. Are we growing a crop of social isolates whose only contact with a "vbf" is on line with text? Leaving what is left to fend through the war torn vistas that are high schools now. Where boot camp needs to be the pre-high school course. So it has come to two worlds of high school teens-the isolates and the grunts. Heaven help us. These are our future. These are the people who will inherit a bigger less physically well generation to do something with. We are placing our lives in the hands of man made social misfits for the most part. Will mass suicides crop up among the elders of my generation? What legislation will abound concerning society in general and the sick and elderly in particular. Will the decrease and demise of the future generations spell disaster. Can a handful of fairly normal kids make it to adulthood with some sense of ethics and sincerity?

I don't know. I just know when I opened my patio door and saw a dozen or so dead goose eggs that had been smashed on the ground by a bunch of bully children old enough to break a clutch egg to reveal a small fragile life form now dead all over the yard, my heart ached. Not just for the goose family who stood by while the massacre took place leaving small corpses of goslings who will never grow, but for the children who felt it necessary to perform this ritual killing. Today animal cruelty, tomorrow people cruelty. Where are the parents, they are at home polishing their guns and suing somebody who yelled at their kid the other day probably.

This is me reporting from the front lines of the neighborhood signing off with a heavy heart and a frightened soul.