THE CHILDREN ARE OUT FUTURE? IF SO, OH BOY...

My vehicle needed maintenance so I had the unfortunate task of catching public transportation. That, in most cities, would be great but in Miami...but I digress. I walked from my stop to home and the middle school/junior high, however they are called today is behind it. So as I'm walking, there are a group of teens, maybe 8th graders, and they congested the entire sidewalk. Now most people would walk on one side to allow the path going the opposite way to clearly get through. No, not this crowd. Most folk would probably wait to allow this to subside. No, not me. They wouldn't move and neither would I so finally, some of them just gave way and were leaned over to the fence since I had my backpack on me.

What is up with these little juveniles thinking they can have their way? What happened to the days when, though teens rebelled, they still had respect for adults? I was a teenager just ten years ago. Granted, the youth in my time, we rebelled but for the most part, we still had to respect our elders. Just ten years later, that respect has melted away. That same school is where my nephew once attended. Because of the problems at that school, as with all black schools, we took him out but on the day we disenrolled (yeah, it's not a word, but hey lol) him from said school, there was a girl who was giving lip to one of the male administrators and instead of putting his foot down, he decided he wanted to laugh and joke with the girl. What kind of bullish is that? And that same girl, as she was walking to class, was giving lip to a female security guard who was advising her to get to class. The girl turned around and in her very eloquent way, told the security guard --who really wasn't, just the secretary doing someone else's job-- "Lady, why is you still talking?" I was appalled by two things: the teen's audacity to speak to an adult, a school employee as such and, "lady, why IS you still talking"? What exactly is going on with our schools that our kids cannot speak grammatically correct? And they are not ashamed that they cannot speak correctly.

What pisses me off more with this batch of youth is that they have the "I don't care" attitude when it comes to everything that will benefit them in the long run but if you argue with them over a souped up ride, or which entertainer is the best, or about some lame boy or girl cheating on them, chances are they'll end up dead by a gun shot or a knife wound. And for the most part, their parents aren't even around because they are working, two or maybe three jobs to support them or because of a single parent family household. Or in a lot of cases, these parents just don't give a f*ck. But they'll be ready to swing if their child commits a crime and claim they are innocent, no matter what the evidence may suggest.

And what about these teenaged parents? They are getting younger and younger. I was on the bus and heard a 7th grader talking about how a fellow classmate was pregnant... and may have AIDS. Correct me if I'm wrong but in 7th grade, the average age is what, 12? So when you're 24, your child will be 12. Wow. And where are her parents? It's sad that now parents aren't allowed to know when their child is taking AIDS test or about their sexual history but a parent can be found in neglect for not giving proper care for their sickly child. Our government is a wonderful thing, huh. I looked in the newspaper this morning to read the front page, then I read the local section, then sports, then the business section. On the front page of the sports, they had the high school football players who signed with national colleges to further their sports careers. This one young man, held a baby in his arms, about 13 mos-18 mos old. The boy has to be 17 or 18. But I assumed maybe it was his little brother or perhaps a nephew.

Why am I so naive? This college bound young man was actually holding his son. Where are his parents, or where were they to advise him on having sex, and unprotected sex at that? Back in my day, a child was shamed for having premarital sex and if a baby was borne of this, then that was double the shame. Like Fantasia said, it's like a badge of honor now. No it is not. When will we get out of the mentality that having a child as a child don't make you cute, nice, or any adjective close to those words? Me, I know I have goals in life and nothing will prevent me from achieving those goals. My parents made sure that I was properly educated in school and at home. They made sure to train me to have an open mind and to look at the broader picture in life. That is sorely missing with today's parents and their children. Sadly, it'll only get worse because if you tell these parents about their children, they get offended, want to curse you out and more often than not, the child will curse you out, too, as they are cussing like sailors these days IN FRONT OF THEIR PARENTS, no less. The fact that we have so many parents who had children when they were teens have given way to today's youth feeling like their parents are their friends and not the authoratative figures, which gives these little monsters leeway to talk to their teachers and administrators the way they do because they talk to their parents that way. And then, when you do chastise, or better yet, beat them, Child Protective Services are called for child abuse. This is another reason why these ingrates get away with so much because rights have been removed from the parents. What happened in the last couple of decades? I'm fed up with this.