Lamenting: Modern Day Parents

Okay, before I even get started here, let me present your argument back to me.

Yes, I am not a parent.

Yes, I don't have an emotional investment in a child that I helped to create.

Yes, I am the least qualified to discuss any of this as I am what I would call a "Summer Parent." I take some kid in my official title as "Psuedo Uncle Len" and treat the hell out of them. Ball games, movies, Disneyland, restaurants every night. Then, when we are done, they go home to you for all the dirty stuff that comprises parenting in 2008.

At the same time, I watch and listen and learn from the youth around me. Some that I know, others that I don't. I remember my own upbringing in an admittedly less scary world. And then I listen to the author of the book in the upper right on two talk shows and my unspoken perceptions are openly validated at last.

Kids today are softer than a roll of Charmin.

While I have not yet read this book, I am already buying into the notions. Ms. Marano paints the picture of an ever increasing number of psychologically-conflicted college students. The end result and direct by-product of years of perhaps well-meaning, but excessive over-parenting.

I see kids headed out to ride on a bicycle with enough bodily protection that they could battle the 300 Spartans. I listen to parents reciting their offsprings' daily schedules. 15 minutes of piano. 45 minutes of homework. Pick you up at little Sally's at 5:42PM because we are due at Grandma's by 6:27PM. And, by the way, don't stand outside because you will be the victim of a drive-by molesting or worse. And don't look at any strangers because they are all bad. Be very careful because the Earth is burning to a crisp and we will all likely be dead in 50 years anyway. And, if you do all that, I'll let you spend an hour on the X-Box where you can use your computer skills to annihilate mankind.

It has never made any sense to me. Then or now. And we wonder why kids are popping Ritilin pills like they are Skittles.

The author's point is that, in our eternal determination to provide a good future for our children, we are robbing them of their youth. And any ability to grow. Because one can argue that you learn more from failure than you do from one cushy success after another. Just go to any bowling alley where there is some urchin's birthday party in progress. And there are covers over the gutters, so every kid's throw down the lane is pre-destined to hit a pin. Where the hell were these things back in the day when I was bowling with my cousin and hitting scores so low that they would rival Paula Abdul's IQ? How does a kid learn to bowl if he or she doesn't understand the consequences of rolling a ball incorrectly? Everybody is pre-ordained for success. There are no bumps in life.

Oh, yes, there are. And these children are done no service by layers and layers of physical and emotional padding. Because, at some junction, little Emily or little Jacob, your life is going to suck. Maybe and hopefully momentarily. But it will reek to high heaven at some point and even the fact that your parents, via cell phone, are in your back pocket, there may not be much they can do for you at that juncture.

Yes, I know the world is much different than when I was a kid. I can recall once, at the age of 10, returning from the grocery with some staples my mom needed: milk, cheese, a package of Kents. A car pulled alongside me and some cretin asked me to hop in because my mother wanted me to come right home. I kept walking and then proceeded to run. Because that's exactly what my folks had told me to do. They did it once. But I never forgot it.

Yes, things were different. By the time I was 10, I was going to the movies by myself. By the time I was 12, my friends and I were hopping the subway to head out to Shea Stadium or Yankee Stadium. At this very early point in our lives, we already knew how to "change at 149th Street-Grand Concourse." I can't imagine any parent (and rightfully so) allowing this today in the Big Bad Bronx. But, at the same time, there needs to be a happy medium someplace. Protecting kids, but also preparing them for life. Keeping them close, but away from you. Softly toughening them. It is an art now lost.

Okay, this is not to suggest that my parents were ignoring me completely. Within my freedom, there were plenty of restrictions. One summer day, I had just gotten my allowance. My mom told me I could walk several blocks to 241st Street, where there were some stores featuring stuff I might want. As I ambled down White Plains Road, a 3 way light bulb got brighter over my head. There was a really great toy store on 232nd Street. A scant nine blocks away. The only barriers? Some really "big streets" I was not allowed to cross.

6 lanes of 241st Street. 6 lanes of 238th Street. 6 lanes of 233rd Street.

I did it nonetheless. A nifty new set of Colorforms.

When I came home, the Toy Detectives, AKA Mom and Dad, went to work.

"Where did you get that?"

"Er.........."

"Where did you get that?"

"Errrrrrrrrrrr..."

In what was about two weeks of intensive interrogations, I was ultimately outed. And then subject to another concept that is alien to the youth of today.

I got punished.

Not a time-out. Not a pat on the ass. Flat-out stuck-in-my-room-with-no-TV-or-radio-or-toys punished.

I didn't get hit much. But I can tell you that both parents and both grandparents each did it once right across my kisser. I can remember when my grandmother did it. She, my grandfather, and I were in Woolworth's. And they were talking German to each other. So, I thought it would be cute if I did the same thing. But, of course, all I knew how to do was make gibberish sound German. That was fun for about ten minutes until my grandmother slapped me soundly from left to right. Ach du lieber.

Needless to say, I never did it again. Nor did I do again whatever offense prompted the backhand from the other three parental figures in my life.

I learned. It only took one time. And I would never do it again. I was toughened anew.

Even in college, I experienced an incident that showed my parents were not that lax. In freshman year, I joined the Fordham University newspaper, "The Ram." Back then, the staff was entrusted with completely laying out the paper at some print shop in the bowels of Greenwich Village. And you all had to take your turns down there on some Thursday overnight. As a lowly freshman, I wanted to demonstrate my eagerness, so I immediately signed up.

Our work was done at about 230AM, so I needed to begin the long trek up to my bed in Mount Vernon, New York. Of course, I had no idea how to do this. I was subway-experienced, but I had never been south of Times Square. And I made every mistake in the book on these dark and lonely station platforms. I'm looking for the express on the local side. I'm waiting for the local on an "express only" line. Somehow and someway, I managed to crawl my way to 205th Street in the Bronx to wait for the bus to Mount Vernon.

Which had stopped running at 2AM.

I have never been more scared than that night when I attempted the two mile lonely walk from 205th Street to Gun Hill Road, where I hoped to pick up the 2 Train. The streets were deserted. My mind was wandering. My death was impending.

Suddenly, a car came careening down Webster Avenue. Right at me with headlights emblazoned.

Maybe "The Ram" could print this as a headline: "Freshman Found as Road Kill."

The car, which appeared bigger than any I had seen before, stopped short of hitting me. I heard a familiar voice as I was blinded by the headlights.

"What the hell are you doing?!!!"

It was my father.

Since I hadn't been too specific about my evening plans, he had spent every hour since midnight driving the route from Fordham Road to Mount Vernon.

I got into the car expecting a verbal onslaught.

Times and punishments had changed. I got silence.

And I never did that again.

One last parental preparation of the adult world I would be joining.

There were no bowling alley bumpers on that Bronx thoroughfare that night. It was a fact of life. One that children don't experience today.

In the ultra-seasoning I got from my parents, there was one that I do wish they had skipped. They dragged me to see my first open casket wake at the age of 5. It has stayed with me forever. To this day, I will avoid this like the plague. So, for those of you planning ahead, if you want me there when your time comes, close the box please.

Now, most of my friends are great parents. Their kids are in high school and college, all delightful with great viewpoints of life and a wonderful tendency to laugh at all my jokes. They're fine. It's not that youth I am fretting about. It's the next generation. The pampered. The guarded. The babied. The wimpy.

And, sadly, the truly f$%ked.

Dinner last night: Antipasto pasta salad.