What went wrong with my generation (Kind of OT)

Sorry for the rant, but a few things have been really bothering me lately. A little background, Im 22, grew up in an upper-middleclass part of town, but went to a very well mixed public school. I was braught up in a very strict household. My mom left and dissapeared from my life when I was 11. As a young kid, up untill afew years back, I thaught I had it rough. when it snowed, I was the only kid shoveling snow that was taller than I was (no joke), while my peers/neighbors parents were doing their driveways. I had chores, my friends thought homeworks was what you call a chore. I was constantly being repremanded, my friends did what they wanted, whenever they wanted. My dad was a hardass.

As a young kid, however, my dad shared his skills as a craftsmen with me on a regular basis. He tought me how to build things, he helped me fix things. Despite my many limitations as a kid, I was allowed open access to just about any tool I needed from a young age. When I got into my early teenage years, I started to resent my fathers parenting techniques. Once my mom left, he had less time to spend with me, but he sure had time to lay down the law, and hold me back from what I thought at the time were things I should be allowed to do. Heck, he was parenting the only way he knew how, the way his father brought him up. Now that I know just a bit more than I did a few years back, I would never trade my upbringing for anything in the world. He brought me up the old fashioned way, and I think because of it, I am a better person.

Unfortunately most people my age have terrible values. Its starting to make me sick. I am constantly let down with peoples disployalty. I was tought to be loyal, and to honor my word, yet its rarely reciprocated in everyday life. The level of respect that people my age show towards their elders is shocking. I often hear kids my age saying things to their parents that would have resulted in welts on my ass, should I have been foolish enough to try saying such crap. Even driving, kids my age make me sick. When your driving, and some ass is running 4 feet from your rear bumper, 9 out of 10 times its some 16-20 year old bitch yacking on her cell phone, like she's the only person in the world. I'm getting to the point, where I'm so discusted of what has become of my generation, that I feel like totaly isolating myself from 99% of them. What went wrong?

 

Guess what ... he will be a genius by the time you are 40 ...

The older I got, the smarter my Dad was ...

 

I don't know what went wrong but try driving a tractor trailer on a daily basis constantly surrounded by these idiots that just don't have a clue as to what they are doing or the damage 80,000 lbs. is about to do to them. Scares the shit out of me!!

 

well, i was gonna say that you're dad is a good man.
most people his (and probably mine, i'm 50+) age ain't too damn bright and way too self-centered..
tell him to keep up the good work!
and go give him a hug, someday you won't be able to...

 

Sounds like your dad is a good man I hope you let your dad read this, I am sure he is proud of you. ......... It is not just kid your age, they had kids like that when I was a kid, I know I was one of them. It was only when they where gone that I started to appreciate the family values that they tried to install in me when i was young. Too bad I was a f*ck~up when they where alive. Now that I am a little older and hopefully a little wiser I am doing the right thing to the best of my ability.

 

thank you for posting that. im going to print a copy and leave it for my teenage daughters to read. all i ever hear is how much of a dick i am for making them do houshold chores and none of there friends haveto etc. the old fashioned work ethic is a thing of the past. why do you think all those mexicans are here? manual labor is beneath the average fat lazy american.

 

Chad,

It sounds like your oldman did OK by you. Sure, having a strict Dad is a kick in the stones most ofthe time, but his lessons are coming home to you. At 22 you have your head more firmlyon your shoulders than I did at that age, let alone most of my friends.

Yes, it sucks not having people respect your values but here's something I learned very late (about 35) in my life and I think you've learned it too. You're only as good as your word and if you can't keep that for others you can't keep it to yourself. Be true to what is right for you and don't let others dissuade you from it. Be receptive to other's opinions and points of view, and you will surely learn form them.

At the end of the day when you're ready to lay down your burden and rest, you'll be able to say "I was true today." That's something nobody will ever be able to take away from you.

If your peers digust you, leave them behind. Find those of a like mind and you'll be much happier for it. Don't let someone's age taint your initial opinion. I've met many bright young people and many middle aged folks who were as dimb as a bag of hair. Seek your own level and then seek a higher one. What you sow you shall reap and the rewards of being true are greater than the temporary pleasures of being young and stupid.

 

People are getting more and more selfish as time goes on. I think we are entering into the breakdown of our society. I have my own beliefs why, but I don't want to start a flame war. I've noticed it too though, and it's sad.

 

go lift some weights or drink a beer go bullshit with your pop, stop whining on the internet, you had it alot better than most.

 

HEY ..im fat and lazy and i was just out hoeing taters and melons!!..but thats because my dad just past awat at 55 last week and he would like fer me to keep the gardens up!!!!i too had my mom leave when i was young 3 ..my pops was bout all i ever had..tought me more then i could teach my kids cause they wont have to grow up in the condidtions i did...when they started talk about changin the drivin age i thought..nobodys tellin my boy he cant drive at 16...now, just 7 years later i now think they should raise it to 21 atleast!!!!fking kids these days need a draft or somethin to get them out the house and learn some respect....my uncle always told me...'wait till ya get older, youll hate teenagers' by GOD he was right!!!!!now for the qoute...the youth is wasted on the young!!!!!!!!!!

 

I'll let you in on a little secret - It's NOT just YOUR generation!!!

And even when I have heard guys "talk the talk" - when time comes to "walk the walk" suddenly they have two left feet.


Talk's cheap! - Now go print YOUR origional post and give it to your Dad!!!!

 

Well, i´m an old electrician and in the hast i read the topic like "what went wrong with my generator", but obvisly (sp) i got it wrong!

 

Hippies.

Everything goes, man.

Seriously though, I wonder the same thing sometimes. Pop culture, Mtv, it is all just a brainwashing machine. Kids heros are the rediculously overpaid sports "players" most of whom could barely keep straight D's in school, they idolize musicians and bands...

Rarely are kids taught the value in an honest day's work, or what honor and respect are.

 

wow, i'm16, and i feel the EXACT same way you do....its crazy.

 

ill bet them melons sure taste good knowing you raised em. my old man made me pull a few weeds in ol garden growing up .HATED it! but i learned the value of a days work. packen on a few lbs myself!

 

Go back and read "Oldcarmike"'s post on this thread. Read it a few times. I can add nothing better to his words. He "gets it"..

 

My dad was the same way. my younger brother of two years and i are about total opposites. me raised by a drill instructor, and the other raised by june cleaver, only more nieve. i broke down about twenty three and told my dad thanks for being a hard-ass. who knows where i might had ended up? my brother is thirty now and still living off of mom.

 

Here's my rant, I am gald to see this post. Your dad sounds like mine 25 years later. You will be a good man from the lessons he has taught you about hard work. Had to be rough on him too.

As a plant Supervisor I see the difference in people by thier ages. You are so right about the respect part, not to mention the lack of any work ethics, May be because I watched my Father get up and go to a 10 - 12 hour day 6 days a week. (now I am doing it) Rarely did he complain.

If the whiney little, Xbox addicted sissies got off thier ass and worked in the summers or ever had to dig a ditch or unload trucks for car and gas money they would be a bit different.

As for the 20 something sweeties with the cel phone glued to the ear,,, WTF!!! you can't hear my bike with the shot gun pipes??? nice lane change dumb ass!

Dave

 

Both my wife and I were raised on a Farm with good work ethics. Our kids now what disipline and respect are. The Oldest daughter is shortly going to be promoted to Capitan in the Army MP. The son is studing for his doctorate degree in lititure on a full scolarship and salary, and the youngest one is starting colledge to be a doctor of medicine. All three will tell you how they got there. Hard work, Respect to and of others, and knowing the defference between right and wrong.
The HAMB seems to be made up of people that know the value of hard work and pride of workmanship other wise they would be on the gold chainer street rod board - right.
And oviously my son did not get hist litirary skills from me??? I'm a Furniture maker

 

Great thread,The "Greatest Generation" or WWII generation was the shit,They built this country,& every one of them loved it.The lucky ones were raised by these people,They knew how hard money was to come by,they knew what freedom cost & they worked their asses off & never once complained about it.They had the can do & if you can't get out of the way & I will attitude.These people are now in their 80's or dead,They made America,& America is sadley leaving with them,The people leading this country now are the baby boomers,horny greedy bastards.The good brought up right guys were shipped off to vietnam & the peace not war,liberals & gays...yes I said it GAYS & are running the country now,even the church has no strong leading anymore but drugs do.Sorry about the rant,I have barred myself from society,My kids are being brought up just like the old world,I know what the past holds & I think I will stay there..it is a better place.I just watched a 1944 documentary on the U.S. seabees,they dropped these guys on an jungle island in the solomans with a few bull dozers & a roller/packer & told them they had to land bombers & transports in three days,They transformed the jungle into a landing strip,runway & all in 3 days & landed 52 aircraft with war supplies.We can't build a damn road in 3 years now,but they could do that in 3 days with slow ass manual equipment,so tell me where it all went wrong.

 

Well, first i read the title then made a witty joke, but then i read (sp, i`m swedish) the trhead and i know what you mean, i have several friends that are in the 50s thing, but your allways wonder for how long, but oneof my closest friends just bought a -50 oldsmobile and proved to me that he was realy interrested in doing all the right things to the car, and have helped us with our cars! The thing is not that he did the right thing with his car, alltough he did, but giving back the help we had givin him, gave me the respect back to the young ones, there are some good ones out there!

 

What went wrong with your generation..hmmm...let's see. It sounds to me like a lack of "parenting" in my opinion. Not towards you because it seems like your father at least cared and tried to raise you to the best of his abilities. You may not have liked it but at least he attempted to teach you values and respect. Two things many people no longer have instilled in them, or believe in, at any age. I'm a bit older than 22 but I'm damn close to your generation! And you're making me feel old!

 

I too often think about things like this. I am 24. My dad was strict on me as a child. Being the only son only added to it. Only after I met my wife and began raising her child(thats a story onto itself) did I start seeing alot of my dad in the way I go about things. I can now see things in a way that I tell myself,"That is what dad meant." The way things are now, you should consider yourself lucky that you had a dad that was a dad. Nowadays kids have parents that want to be best friends first and parents second and don't get that chance early in life to learn things like family values and respect and hard work. I thanks my parents now for what I hated so much back then.

 

Well I exactly know how you feel. I have lived on a farm my whole life and had plenty of chores to do and a strict dad....but my mom was alot softer on me. I learned all the good things, hard work, respect and everything else. And all I see today is wannabe drug dealers and pot heads. Easily half the guys my age were barely passing school, they have no respect for others and think they can just skip through life easily. I knew at one point about 5 guys were all on unemployment insurance and were buying cars and playing lots of poker at casinos, and not making a dime, losing it all. Like come on get a job and a life. And then I see my aunt who doesnt do a god damn thing to her kids and they are monsters, like shit my grandpa when I was a kid had an orange hot wheels track above the fridge and we knew we had to behave or have welts on our asses for a couple days.

 

My 11-year-old doesn't have an X-box or nintendo.
We don't have cable tv. Two crappy channels, and El Telemundo! (which comes in HiDef-clear, naturally).
Send him outside to play.
He WORKS for money...recycles, works at my swap meet, stuff like that. When we recyc, he does all the lifting. If he wants some big ticket item and it isn't a birthday or holiday, he earns the money for it.
He's got a pocket knife, a sling shot and a BB gun. And he knows how to use them. And he knows that if he mis-uses them, there will be consequences. And they will be unpleasant.
We've taught him how to behave in public. He knows if he mis-behaves, there are consequences. And they're unpleasant.
When other kids are acting up, mis-behaving or doing wrong, we never miss an opportunity to point it out, and get his opinion on it.
His friends know how to behave at our house. And I can tell you--for most of them, it's damn sure not how they behave at their own houses!
And they know that if I catch them mis-behaving, there will be consequences. And they will be unpleasant. (Go home right now and tell your parents what you did. I'll be down in 20 minutes to tell them, and to make sure you told them.")
We point out when other adults are being bad parents. He points out what happens when ther are no consequences.
I explain things to my son--I work really hard at not saying "Because I said so." I have reasons for doing the things I do, and I try to let him know what those reasons are, so he learns from it.
He gets in trouble. He tries my patience.
He knows that because he's earned our trust, he gets to do a lot more things than other kids his age.
He knows he needs to figure things out for himself first, and then ask me for help if he's stumped.
He knows where my tool box is, and how to use my tools. (We're still working on putting them away when he's done though.)
He knows life isn't fair--"Fair is where farmers take their pet pigs and two pound tomatoes." He understands that. He doesn't always like it, but he understands it.
He knows that when opportunity knocks, it's wearing overalls and looks like work. Because it is work.
He knows that if being rich was easy, everyone would do it.
He understands the concept of a home mortgage, the evils of credit cards (hard learned for his mother and me), and that things cost money.
He knows he's not getting a damn cell phone for his next birthday. Or the next several. He gets a quarter and a dime to use the damn pay phone like I did.

God I pray he remembers all this over the next 11 years!

-Brad

 

Chad, you're in a good place for people who can understand that opinion.

The sort of person it takes to dream and then build something himself is the sort who's learned self value rather than self gratification, has a backbone rather than an excuse, a cause rather than a need, and is one who'll stand and deliver when it's needed. You won't know him by any particular look or sound, just by his actions. Good company to be in, and yes, harder to find these days. Harder, but still there.

 

"What went wrong with my generation ? "

A bunch of drug bag idiots had babies.....

 

My favorite part about my generation (I'm 23, so I guess I'm still somewhat in the mix, but not really) is when I drive past high schools now and the look like a f*cking new car lot. All I ever hear from my little sister's (she's 14) friends is what car they're mommy & daddy are buying for them when they turn 16. When I turned 16, I gave my dad $500 from selling my bug (which I painted a house to get) And we towed my 55 Buick down from Oregon & it had sat in a garage for 10 years. The only reason I had a running car was because my brother was away at college & I got to drive his. Other wise I bummed rides, rode my bike or took the bus. I can't stand it when you see kids at the mall with Credit cards in there parents name buying whatever they want because they're parents think thats the wasy to teach them to be responisible when my broke ass is scouring the clearance rack cuz that's whats in my budget. I remeber many times riding with my brother in his bug (we were a VW family for a while) sitting on the side of the road fixing the throttle cable or adjusting valves or what not. We had a reason to get a job and earn some $$ to upgrade from a hammered old hane-me-down bug, becasue in my family, if you wanted it, better get it with your own $$ is what we were taught & that's how my parents grew up, you WORK for what you want, you don't expect to be givin anything. K, down off my soap box and off to bed, have a nice night

 

Im very glad you wrote that chad. you really should show your father. Im sure he would be proud. Im 32 and was raised quite simular. My household went to church on sundays etc... I was running a forklift at 8 years old, a 780 case backhoe at 12 years old for DADS Construction company... I got into cars and older crowds because I cant stand most of the people my age. I am not a BLING BLING type, and I believe I will wait untill I can afford what others are trying to buy NOW. Most of our generation are a NOW NOW NOW type of people. They want NEW NEW NEW stuff. Houses, cars, TVs, Vacation Homes.... Show off show off show off... They dont care that they are selling their souls to get it... They are missing their chance to RAISE their kids, They work to buy buy buy... and make payments upon payments.... TOOO MANY RAP VIDEOS... And from the looks of our generations' kids.... well, Im buying shells for my 44... Lots of them. Cause when they hit 21 years old, guys like you and me are gonna have to save our country. God knows these too-good-to-work-pussies wont stand up for our country or anything "RIGHT" in this world.
Again, thanks. It is good to 'meet' you. Welcome aboard. Dont worry, its not too crowded on this boat.