I saw a meme on Facebook recently that showed a barrel of monkeys with some hanging on the side, others climbing in or out and it read, “You know we used to be a lot more fun”. I’m pretty sure many young people won’t even get the reference of a barrel of monkeys, but it was a pretty cool game if you remember ever playing it. And no, a barrel of monkeys isn’t as fun as it used to be. Maybe fun isn’t even as fun as it used to be.
Too many kids are stuck on the cell phone too much of the time these days. Too many kids don’t play interactive games with other kids or even adults because they’re always online, on the computer, glued to the phone or watching the television. From time to time I’ll see a meme or post on Facebook that brings back memories from “back in the day” and it stirs up all kinds of memories. I guess I’d even say, “I was a lot more fun back in the day”.
I saw a meme just the other day that showed a picture of an old green garden hose being held up with water coming out of the end of the hose. The meme read “The official sports drink when I was a kid”. Yep, most anyone from my generation remembers that “back in the day” how we all drank from those old, often dirty green garden hoses. Somehow we all lived. I remember the water always had a little “extra” taste to it after it came out of the old hose, especially if the hose was hot from laying in the sun. Ah, to “good old days”. I don’t know what kind of carcinogen we were exposed to but they don’t seem to have killed us.
I also see a meme that shows the back ledge of an old car with a small boy laying up on it. Lots of us did that too. No seatbelt, dangerous place to ride for sure and I’m definitely not recommending the practice today. But, all the same, we all did these things “back in the day”. One thing for sure, life is always changing, and I’ll be long gone when today’s kids are talking about their version of “back in the day”.
I know it’s normal for old timers to do a lot of remembering what life was like “back in the day” and by all means not all of life “back in the day” was good or something to brag about. At the same time life was easier “back in the day, there were less rules and regulations and government agencies telling you what you could and couldn’t do and less lawyers to take you to court. Sometimes I wonder if kids today are missing out on some of the old life lived “back in the day”. Of course, they’re safer, more protected, more spoiled, have more given to them and more done for them than kids did “back in the day”. But all in all, I’m not sure our kids are all that better off today. Will they be prepared for the real world where living under the umbrella of constant protection and trophies for everyone aren’t the norm once they grow up? I don’t know. It’s complicated. But, like I remember the monkeys saying as they hung onto the barrel, “we were a lot more fun in the old days”. Let’s get our kids off the phone, away from the computer and back in real life. Just a thought.