The Way It Once Was and The Way It Is Now

In the news today the libs. are saying desks and seats for school children must be made bigger in order to accommodate their increased girth. They are also dictating what children should eat and actually have taxpayer funded people who go around and inspect lunches mother’s make for their children, as recently heard in the news.

The problem is today kids lead a very sedentary life, the only thing that gets any exercise is their mouth and thumbs. Parents today are to dull-witted when it comes to being able to tell their children to go outside and play and to make matters worse children no longer know how to play. Back in the 50’s and 60’s kids were always active.

I remember when I was going to high school back in Portsmouth, N. H., I would have to walk approximately three miles whether in sunshine or sleet and snow. There were times I would get to school and be so cold I would have to stand next to the heater in the classroom to thaw out enough to bend my knees to sit down, now that may be a exaggeration but not by much.

Weekends were filled with chores and going out to try making money mowing lawns,

I also worked six days a week doing a paper route whether I felt fine or sick with the flu..

When it snowed I had the driveway and the whole front of the house to shovel out, only to have the joy of doing it all over again once the snowplow came through.

I fit playing ball and other kids games and activities in after my responsibilities were completed.

I ate everything placed in front of me, Mom’s homemade pies, doughnuts, cakes and man oh man those big Saturday morning breakfasts of bacon, eggs, pancakes and syrup or french toast, I can still see her cooking in the kitchen and smell the cooking. Kids then didn’t put on weight. Today kids sit and eat, they exercise their thumbs on their stupid electronic games instead of their body’s by going outside and having fun. I have seen that to ask a kid today to go outside and play they just kind of look at you with a puzzled look on their face, playing tag, touch football, hide and go seek, or girls playing hopscotch, or playing with their doll houses, or kids playing marbles or games with football cards are as foreign to them as, well, finding a toy cap gun in the department store. In school their learning capacity has dramatically fallen, kids today are actually dull witted compared to the day of their grandparents, and this worsening trend is growing exponentially till someday, and I fear not all that long away, the proud, intelligent, hardworking people and country we once were will be only a figment of the then current generations imagination as they go through their dumbfounded, dull-witted lives, living under dictatorial rule, with no ambition or desire to fight back. It scares me to think how far this country has fallen and it is only hanging on as though from a precipice.. Gordon Avery, Feb. 18, 2012