When I was a kid, I was allowed to be a kid

It is hard to isolate the worst thing happening in our great country but the demise of one's childhood is in the top 10 in my opinion. What I mean is children are being forced to grow up way too fast in this society. I grew up in Brentwood, a small, rural town in Northern Williamson county. Now that is funny & precisely my point. If you compare the Brentwood I grew up in & the current town then you see exactly what I'm talking about. When I was a kid we were allowed the freedom to explore the creek across the street, the houses being built in the neighborhood & the cave behind our house with little warning given by our parents. We were told "Look both ways before you cross the street & you better come home when we ring the bell". Today kids are scared to play in creeks or caves & would rather play video games or surf on the Internet. Their parents have put such a sense of fear into them about abduction; the idea of having fun is replaced with cautiousness towards anything foreign to them. The removal of corporal punishment in the public school system has lead to a systematic breakdown of respect towards our teachers. Children these days are allowed to disrespect their teachers, their parents & any adult in society. Back in the day this behavior wasn't tolerated in the schools or the home. If you disrespected a teacher then you were paddled by the principal; if you disrespected your parents you had a belt taken to you. Today, teachers are fired for physical punishment & parents are taking to jail in hand cuffs for doing the right thing. With the development of cable television & the Internet, children are exposed to scantily clad pop stars dancing like they were strippers, other young children in compromising sexual situations & programs perpetuating graphic violence. When I was a kid we had 3 channels on the television & Charlie's Angels was as close to porn for us. We watched Gilligan's Island, Mr Rogers & Bozo the clown....then went outside to play with our friends wearing jeans, a t-shirt & tennis shoes. Their were no medications to cure our conditions, we weren't ADD, we were just not very smart. We weren't autistic, we were brilliant but a little different. Now, with the cellular phone explosion, children can be tracked by their parents & don't even have conversations as texting is the greatest thing. All these pall in comparison to the U.S. debt these children have inherited from our government. It is estimated that every child under the age of eighteen has inherited $72,000 in debt when they can't even get a credit card until the age of eighteen. It is truly sad that our society has done this to our kids. I believe that somewhere out there in a small town kids are allowed to be kids & they don't know any better...or worse. Good for them.
Cheers,
Rip Pewett kid at heart
p.s. the picture above could of been the Pewett boys rolling our Big Wheels down our driveway, taking that hair pin turn & jumping the curb right into the shrubs. It was some of the most fun 2 kids could ever have.