There’s no denying it kid’s today have it much easier than we did. For example, they ride a bus to school or their parents drive them. I, on the other hand, had to walk two miles uphill both ways while carrying my younger siblings on my back. I also had a paper route, so I had to get up even earlier and deliver papers in the pitch dark before I hiked to school.
When a modern child goes on a vacation with their parents they take along their iPads, cellphones, Play Stations, or portable DVD players (unless their SUV or minivan comes equipped with the video players already built into the back of the front seats or that drops down from the ceiling). Thus today’s kids are entertained all the way to their destination. I, on the other hand, had only the “Alphabet Game“. For those of you who haven’t heard of it here is how it goes: You look for billboards or signs along the highways; the game begins when you or one of your brothers or sisters finds the letter “A” at the beginning of a word. You have to shout out the word first before anyone else does. Of course this created a lot of arguing and bickering which made the trip even longer. We were so competitive that Mom had play referee and decide who said it first. Then you move on to the letter “B” and so forth. The game usually ended when you got to the letter “Q”– unless you were near a town that had a Quintos hotel.
Today, when the kids get to the motel they have an Olympic-size swimming pool to play in. Plus all of the extras of a five star motel. Or their parents own a fifth-wheel camper complete with a kitchen, shower, bathroom, couch, and living quarters. I had the “luxury” of our pop-up camper that Dad pulled behind our ‘57 Chevy. Dad sometimes set it up a day before we left so the musty and mold smell could air out, of course it didn’t. Our camper was rated to sleep four people; at last count, we had six in my family. That made it not only crowded but smelly.
And we had to swim in the same lake we fished in. That greenish-brown murky looking lagoon often had moss growing on the top of it, and occasional water snakes. But there was no way you could open your eyes to see where you were going.
So when your millennial kids are complaining about how terrible their life is, remind them what us baby boomers had to endure to make it through our childhood days. They won’t care, but at least we get to kvetch about how much easier they have it
And when they are grownups with kids of their own, I‘m sure they‘ll be saying something like, “When I was your age, I had to carpool to school in a crowded minivan. We didn‘t have anti-gravity boots like you do today!”