Remember when labels used to mean something? R, PG13, XXX. I do. Now we speak in and type in accronyms and abbreviations that sometimes I feel like it’s a language all in of itself.

ED (educational or sexual) ELL, ADD, COPD, HPV, SCOTUS, TTYL, and countless others. LOL. Not to mention made up words like chantix, plavix, lipitor, etc. Just be sure not to read or listen to the side effects.

Being a child of the 80’s, born in the 70’s, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

XXX meant there was no way you were supposed to be able to see or read it.

Now it’s just another shitty Vin Diesel franchise. Yeah, just said franchise in regards to movies starring Mr. Diesel.

Over 16 million people have watched that. Yet, I have zero luck getting anyone besides my wife to read these blogs. I think twitter must be like screaming in a vacuum. But, I paid for a year of this blogging thing so i’ll give it all I got.

Is there anyone out there that was born around the same time that reflect on their childhood and think, “wow that was fuckin awesome!”.

Do you think the children of today will look back to this moment in 2069 and think so nostalgically about the late teens?

Conversations used to happened face to face. If you didn’t like what was being said you just walked away. Now, they say you can’t hide from negativity in the digital world.

If kids today are so connected why do so many claim to feel alone?

Remember when the wall phone ringing was exciting and the person on the other line was announced to anyone in the house? No place to hide if the call was for you. Someone always around the corner, behind a door, or listening to your side of the conversation. Today, it’s Cambridge Analytica.

A youthful innocence that seemed like you go anywhere, do anything, and you wouldn’t end up on a milk carton. Surely, i’m not the only one that remembers those faces of lost children staring at me while I ate my cereal.

Now there are smartphones, social media*, and all that this digital world has to offer. How couldn’t we become so desensitized?

Or maybe we’re not. There were gay people then, terrorism and war. The IRA, Hamas, PLO, that whole Gulf War thing, bad then worse now. Confusing then to a child, and it continues to be as inexplicable today to our own children. People loved the President, people hated the President. Equal Rights, livable wage, universal health care, the war on drugs…well, that was all the same then and now.

Back then we had actual oil shortages.

Nuclear power plants were blowing up.

If not you have to remember Chernobyl. Disclaimer, the music is super depressing but a nuclear disaster is scary.

And yet we still are not fully invested or motivated to seek more sustainable sources of power. I guess most of us survived it then and most of us will survive now. But, how long can we keep kicking this can down the street.

Again, I’m speaking from my own childhood as a poor kid from a small knit community in Indiana. The key word there is community.

Juxtaposed those moments to the distracted dinner tables of today.

Now, as a parent myself, and to all the adults out there that a surrounded by children it’s time to really understand that our kids will become us. Or at the very least they will inherit some of our qualities through heredity and others through general observation. It’s that whole community thing. Like it or not it’s nature and nurture. If Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth was to sciency for you lets let an expert explain what is happening to the delicate balance to our worlds ecosystem.

Obviously bad things did happened then and now.

But should that have lead us to this?

Turn off the screens. Open your mouths and I think we can figure some of this out.

At least I hope, for our kids sake.