If Latin is Greek to you, allow me to translate: “Things are awful these days, especially Japanese camp food, and it’s other people’s fault. Mostly young people.”
These timeless words were spoken by Cicero, one of the most obnoxious scolds in Roman history. Remember that includes lots of popes, who rarely congratulated congregations on their sterling behavior.
Still the curmudgeon had a point. I agree with him, and a surprising number of other grumpy old people do too. Only we don’t seem to agree on what exactly the bad things are and what bad people are doing wrong. They seem to be a moving target, and our reflexes have slowed a teensy bit in the past few decades. Fret not; I’m here to help.
WHEN I WAS A ...
Those when-I-was-a-boy/girl/player/cowboy reminders of past glory or misery are struggling to become even more irrelevant. For example, my father often pointed out he memorized the times table all the way — all the way — to 25 x 25. And he could sing the Illinois State Song. No, it’s not “Bear Down, Chicago Bears.”
He often recounted driving a team and wagon 50 miles when he was 12. I was unimpressed by his proud achievements. I kept my mouth shut, though, since I had no way to measure those skills.
The laments that matter today, of course, involve the treasured standards of accomplishments in our lives during which everything was much better or worse, depending on the particular rant. It was bad enough when my sons got to use an HP 38G calculator in college instead of a manly Post Versalog slide rule — the queen of slipsticks. We used those babies to put a man on the moon, ya know. It gets worse.
My grandson is entering engineering school and will probably never even carry a pencil unless they put a slot for it on his laptop. This is how civilization ends, folks.
A TRAGIC DECLINE
Meanwhile, back on the farm, standards are degrading even faster. As I speak, there are farmers who couldn’t run a field cultivator with less than 10' of overlap should GPS fail. Or estimate soybean moisture by how many are hitting the cab windshield.
A front-mount row cultivator would take them all day to hook up. In fairness, that’s about how long it took us back in the day, but that’s because it was stored in 6' weeds along the fence.
I could go on — and on — and usually do. But clearly, things are going into the abyss in a backpack. If geezers don’t point this out frequently, how would people recognize this tragic decline? While you’re thinking about that, pass me another deep-fried s’more.
