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SlIppery rock GazeTTe
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What in Tarnation Has Happened to Young People Today?
Ask any aging Baby Boomer. Kids today are less educated, mannerly and industrious—not to mention more selfish, rebellious and lazy—than ever before.
Well guess what? It’s been that way for thousands of years.
Even geezing Greek philosopher Aristotle sermonized about the matter in the Fourth Century B.C. “They think they know everything,” he groused about youngsters, “and are always quite sure about it. This, in fact, is why they overdo everything.”
I recently stumbled upon Ari’s whipper- snapper rant while searching for informa- tion on a totally unrelated topic. One thing led to another, and soon I was perusing results of a research project by psycholo- gists John Protzko and Jonathan Schooler at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
They conducted online interviews with 3,458 Americans, 33-51 years of age. It would take this entire issue of the Slippery Rock Gazette to detail all their work, but suffice it to say they quizzed these adults about how life is today, compared to life they remember from their youth.
The key is “how they remember.”
After all the tabulations were assessed, the scientists boiled everything down to what they called the “Kids These Days Effect.”
Yep. It’s the same selective memory from a song made famous in “Bye, Bye Birdie,” the award-winning Broadway musical from the early 1960s: “Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way, what’s the matter with kids today?”
“It’s the exact same complaints time after time: They’re disrespectful, they don’t lis- ten to their elders and they don’t like to work,” Protzko was quoted in a publica- tion from the university. “There is a psy- chological or mental trick that happens that makes it appear to each generation that the subsequent generations are objec- tively in decline, even though they’re not.”
How well I know. I once had to give myself a personal dope slap while raising hell to my kids about rap and heavy metal music. About the time my pious fulmina- tions hit third gear, I suddenly remembered
Sam Venable
Department of Irony
my father raising similar hell about rock and roll. For once, I had the good sense to shut the hell up. Touché.
The two researchers also discovered that the more skilled adults were in any given pursuit, the more likely they were to com- plain about youthful deficiencies. Thus, if Glen Grownup enjoys (pick any topic, any hobby, any job, whatever), he often thinks younger practitioners are dumber than a sack of rocks.
OK, I get that. Times change; people don’t. I understand the “kids these days effect” completely. But there’s one thing I know to the pit of my soul that has, indeed, changed.
Geography.
How come the gentle mountain trails I hiked as a teenager have become decidedly steeper and rockier in the last 50 years?
Sam Venable is an author, comedic enter- tainer, and humor columnist for the Knoxville (TN) News Sentinel. His latest book is “The Joke’s on YOU! (All I Did Was Clean Out My Files).” He may be reached at sam. venable@outlook.com.
No Moose is Good Moose
“They were looking for some help getting a moose out of a basement,” said Capt. Josh Thompson with Central Emergency Services on the Kenai Peninsula. “I’m not kidding.”
The moose, estimated to be a 1-year-old bull, had a misstep while eating breakfast one Sunday morning by a home in Soldotna, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage.
“It looks like the moose had been trying to eat some vegetation by the window well of a base- ment window and fell into it, and then fell into the basement through the glass,” Thompson said. That’s where it was stuck, one floor below ground.
A biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game was able to tranquilize the moose, but the animal wasn’t completely unconscious.
“He was still looking around and sitting there, he just wasn’t running around,” Thompson said. Once sedated, the next problem was get- ting the moose — which weighed at least 500 pounds — out of the house. Improvising a bit, responders grabbed a big transport tarp that’s typically used as a stretcher for larger human patients. Once the moose was in position, it took six men to carry him through the house and back
outside.
Photos of the morning rescue show the moose
unfazed, simply looking ahead between the two men maneuvering the front of the tarp down a hallway, watching where they are going.
Thompson said the moose just hung out for a while after they got outside until a reversal agent for the tranquilizer kicked in. The biolo- gist also treated minor lacerations on the back of the moose’s legs from falling through the win- dow, the Anchorage Daily News reported.
Once the sedative wore off, the moose appar- ently had his fill of human companionship and wanted to get back to the wild.
“He got up and took off,” Thompson said.
F
irefighters in Alaska got an unusual request
for assistance one weekend from the Alaska Wildlife Troopers, but it wasn’t your mundane cat-stuck-in-a-tree situation.