By Neal Wooten
My dad was a teen in the 50s when kids wore t-shirts with cigarettes in the sleeves, wore leather jackets, rolled their pants legs up, combed their hair in a pompadour, and listened to that evil rock-n-roll music. Parents back them were angered and appalled.
My oldest sister was a teen in the 70s when kids wore huge collars and bell-bottomed jeans, tie-dyed shirts, peace symbols, guys had long hair, and they listened to all types of hippie music. It was the decade of free love. Parents of that time were shocked and saddened at the decline of civilization.
I was a teen in the 80s, and we wore tight jeans, high-top tennis shoes, feathered our hair, exercised in leotards, played with Rubik’s Cubes, and listened to disco and heavy metal music. My dad would just look at me and my friends and shake his head, wondering what happened to the world.
Now, the tradition continues as I have gotten old and see the young people today with their pants down around their buttocks, torn clothing (bought that way), nose rings, lip rings, tongue rings, grills on their teeth, mohawks, dreadlocks, and listening to rap music. I shake my head as I wonder what happened.
I think each generation goes through this. We all see the rebellious trends of the kids today as being disrespectful and destroying our society. But is that really the case? The children of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s became parents and, like their parents, frowned upon the trends of the next generation.
Maybe it’s just human nature not to want to accept change. Maybe it’s the fear that these fashion woes of the youth will lead to a lack of morals and work ethic. Maybe the kids today just need to express themselves before becoming adults for the rest of their lives, working 40 hours a week, and being smothered in bills and responsibilities.
It’s a foregone conclusion that history will repeat itself, and the kids of today will one day become parents too, and they’ll have an entire new generation of kids to annoy the heck out of them. By then, kids will have spikes sticking out of their ears, 3-D animated tattoos, a ring through their skulls, and pants that hover somewhere around the knees.
If I’m still alive then I’m going to enjoy watching all the parents who once drove their own parents crazy, rolling their eyes and wondering what happened to the world. I’ll just sit back in my rocking chair on my porch, work my Rubik’s Cube, watch reruns of Cheers, adjust the music on my Walkman, and giggle until my false teeth fall out.
