Remember when things were simple ........

The past few weeks have been ridiculously crazy. Not just for me, but for the whole family ....

1. Teenager starting his Senior year and all that goes with it: advanced placement classes, Sr. pictures, varsity sports, college exams, new job, parent meetings, and the paperwork!
2. 5-year-old starting kindergarten and all that goes with it: evaluations, packing lunches, strict bedtime, his homework (which he makes up but feels he needs to do it every night anyway), PTO meetings, and the paperwork!
3. Start of a new semester and all that goes with it: syllabi, advising, rosters, events, working late, and the paperwork!

But after a crazy day at work, discussions with undergraduate admissions for my son, a parent meeting for soccer, I came home to a sleeping child. I just looked at him and saw peace and it made me start to think about when life was simple. Not just simple in the sense that my mom took care of all the things I take care of now, while I sat back and just thought it all kind of happened. I mean simple.

• I mean going back to a time when there were a total of 5 television channels to choose from.
• A time when a child could go in the neighborhood at 8:00 am and find friends to play with until the street lights came on, stopping back home only to grab a sandwich or go the bathroom.
• A time where being in the house was boring so that you went outside and made time machines out of trees (ok - maybe I am sharing too much, but that was one of my favorite games).
• When a parent would be able to call their child home without a cell phone plan because the parents all knew each other (or in my case my dad would stand on the front porch and whistle. (Every kid in the neighborhood knew my dad's whistle and if I didn't hear it they would come and find me).
• A time when gossip was only passed over the backyard fence ... not the entire world in a millisecond.
• When the goal for a person was to make a difference - not get 15 minutes of fame on a reality show.
• A time when people trusted not only in their government, but in the people next door and the person who owned the corner store.
• An era where nobody cared what the name on the back of your jeans was or how much they cost. A time when people did not get killed for their "Air Jordans."
• I remember when celebrities were people to look up to .... actresses, sports stars, politicians. If they behaved badly it was not celebrated (like Snookie being arrested for disorderly conduct, or Brittney Spears treatment of her children or any number of sports stars behaving badly)
• A time when 3-year-olds could just be kids ..... not a tool for the fame their parents wanted and didn't get.

Just a time when life was simple. I have so many memories as a child that were just me and my friends playing. Not scheduled play dates or organized sports. Just a bunch of kids in the backyard with some trees and imagination. Did we get hurt? Yes. And the boo-boos were cured with soap and water, a good old-fashioned band-aid and a kiss.

I love technology - to a point. I love my cell phone and my laptop. I am a big fan of the Internet, Blue-ray DVDs, the MP3 player. But I think all of this technology, the speed by which information travels, the medical research ..... all of it has made life less simple.

It is the problem with our government, it is the problem with our family values, it is the problem with society. We have stopped being creative, stopped thinking critically. We are over scheduled, under rested, over stressed. We stopped taking responsibility for our own actions because there is always someone worse (for example, Massachusetts House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi's attorneys state 12 years is too long a sentence for a conviction on fraud and extortion since he only took $65,000.00 and other politicians convicted of the same crime traditionally only get 7 years. Yet the same people who have sent the judge letters of support for DiMasi are the same people who will write comment after comment about how people on welfare need to take responsibility for their own actions! It just makes no sense!

I would like to go back to a time when things were simple, for myself and my children. I want them to enjoy being kids and being young. I want them to realize they can be the cause of their own happiness and well being. That you can't solve your problems with a prescription, that life takes hard work, that you have to live within your means regardless of the credit you could be given.

I think tonight I am tired and disillusioned. I know the "simple" life was not always perfect and perhaps because we tend to only remember the happy memories from childhood my memory of it is vague. But watching that child sleep this evening, while my teenager rushed through a sandwich for dinner after the soccer meeting so he could get his homework done .... I just wished for simple.

Reality Television ..... I just don't get it!

This morning on the news I heard a story about a "Teen Mom" star who had attempted suicide. That was a sad story, no one should have to go through that, even if it is just a cry for attention.

What really upset me (aside from the fact that this is considered a news story at all) was that at the end of the segment they mentioned that the stars of this show make 6 figures a year. I was stunned! That is more money than most people I know make in a year working really hard. What is society getting from paying reality stars this much money to bring down society?

I only know about most of the reality shows from watching commercials for them, the occasional news story online that catches my attention, or the front pages of tabloids while I am waiting in line at the grocery store. I did watch "Jersey Shore" for about 15 minutes once because my students told me I could not judge reality television unless I watched it .... that is 15 minutes of my life I will never get back.

What I do not understand is when it became acceptable for the worst of society, vulgar, uneducated, violent, trashy, to become role models for our youth. Young people don't just watch Jersey Shore because they think it is funny, they watch it and then emulate it. I suppose it started with "Jerry Springer" the more outrageous the better. Jerry came to my school when I was an undergrad and gave a presentation on speech ethics (you can laugh, I did). But he did say that his show had no socially redeeming value and if that people watched his show and wanted to be like his guests he felt bad for them. If only he knew that his show would be the precursor to people being famous just for being famous I wonder if he would have continued? Probably, he made a lot of money.

And that is really what it all comes down to isn't it .... the dollar. If the teen moms are making 6 figures a year, someone else is making so much more. With no consideration or care about what it is doing to society as a whole. The only way that we can stop this insanity is to stop watching the shows, but people won't. It is like watching animals at the zoo, we know it is cruel to take them out of their home and put them in a cage, but we really like to see them so we continue to visit the zoo.

I hope this young girl gets out of the hospital and gets well. I hope she looks at her life and realizes that despite the bank account she has messed up. I hope that she gets her daughter back, for gos fame and becomes a mom. And I hope eventually that we realize we should not be giving reality stars like Snookie book deals, but we should be encouraging our daughters to read about real female role models.

Society makes me sad sometimes .... it is just crazy!
Teen Mom Suicide Attempt