Race to the Finish

Maybe it's just me.  The more I read news and the more I live and learn, the more I question the intelligence of those following my generation.  Granted, I questioned the intelligence of many in my own generation.  Still do, in fact.  


Let's take drugs, for example.  Wait.  That came out wrong.  Let's talk about drugs, not take them.


I was born in 1969.  So my generation was coming into itself in the 80's.  I was in high school then.  The days when girls had big hair.  If they used enough hairspray to make their bangs touch the top of the door frame when they entered a room they were stylin'.   Boys had mullets.  When that became not cool enough, they permed their mullets.  For the record, I totally wanted a mullet when I was in school.  But, my hair kind of defied explanation.  My hair didn't grow long, it grew big.  And the hair in the back that I desperately wanted to reach my shirt collar was more apt to curl up on itself.  It was hopeless.  In hindsight, I think it was God's way of protecting me from never having pictures of me, with a mullet, surface in this age of Facebook.


Where was I?  Oh right.  Sorry, I was supposed to be talking about drugs.  I had to set the scene.  When I was in high school, the posters with the whole egg, designated as "your brain", and then the next frame with the egg frying in a black skillet, which was meant to describe "your brain on drugs", were incredibly popular.  They were everywhere.  On posters.  On television public service announcements.  I couldn't say if that campaign ever stopped anyone from wanting to do drugs.  If I had to guess, I would say not.  The people I knew who did drugs could not possibly have been less influenced by a fried egg.  Whereas I, who had no interest in drugs anyway, would look at the poster and think to myself that a fried egg sounded delicious right about now.  I was never tempted by drugs.  I could always be tempted by food.  

In this period of the 80's there was 1) alcohol and 2) marijuana.  There wasn't much variety back in the day.  At least not where I lived.  No "designer" drugs.


I moved on from the high school and college years and into the workplace as I grew older.  Turns out, in the workplaces I happened to be in, things hadn't changed a great deal.  If they had done random drug testing for marijuana in almost any of the places I was working at the time, over half the workforce would be fired.  Which was exactly why there were never random drug tests.  Everyone knew who was doing it.  And it wasn't affecting job performance.  At least not that you could tell with some of them.


I did have occasion to change jobs when I was around thirty years old and went into a job at a restaurant that was predominantly the newer generation.  Kids still in high school or freshly out.   This is where I started to notice a generation gap.  Added to the usual mix of drugs and alcohol, prescription drugs were pretty popular.  Granted, this was not exclusive to the younger members of the staff.  Some my age and older partook in any and all of the choices available.  But it was at this time I started to question the intelligence factor of the newer generation.  I never claimed it was a scientific study.  If it had been, I certainly would have gathered a larger core sample from which I would watch and learn.  


There was a young lady working at the restaurant who was completely irate one day just as I was coming in to work.  We both happened to be walking past the manager's office when she turned to him and demanded he do something about the theft problem in the restaurant.  Of course he was willing to help so he asked for more details.  As luck would have it, she had a bag of weed in her purse when she worked the previous evening and during her shift, it had allegedly been stolen from her handbag.  Naturally, she was outraged and thought he should take action against who she was sure had taken it and try to get it back for her.  At this point, he had looked out at me.  I was laughing too hard to be of any help.  He asked her if she had thought about phoning the police to sort out the matter.  She rolled her eyes at him.  "I can't tell the cops I had marijuana stolen!" she exclaimed.  He said "But you think it's okay to come in here and tell me that you brought an illegal substance onto company property and you want me to do something about it?"


There was another employee at a later time who, after I had moved into management, came in to the office to ask the general manager and myself if we could save him all the banana peels we used when we made desserts.  We glanced at each other and I had to ask why.  "Well," he explained, "I heard you can get way higher smoking the banana peels than you do with pot."  Eureka!!


Incidentally, I walked into the kitchen not long after that and there were banana peels in the convection oven, apparently for drying purposes.  I just told him to clean up his mess when he was done.  I did hear later that they weren't as potent as he had hoped and it had given him a headache.


It's my feeling this was about the point where someone tainted the gene pool with something and I'm not sure what.  Since those days, I'm astounded at least monthly when I read what kids are doing trying to get high.  Some dork wanting to smoke banana peels was pretty funny, I admit.  But something has happened and things have turned far more serious.


Some of the things I've heard about teens either huffing, snorting, smoking, ingesting, etc. :
Paint
Household Chemicals
Cough Syrup
Nutmeg
Morning Glory Seeds
Bath Salts  
Vodka soaked tampons (used by both girls and boys, frighteningly enough)
Potpourri and incense
...
And the list goes on and on and on.


Getting high seems to have taken on a whole new desperation, if you look at it from the outside.  Sparking up a doobie in the 70's and 80's seems fairly mild compared to the risks that kids are taking as time goes on.  Even smoking banana peels is tame in comparison.  Stupid, but tame.


This could be the time to get philosophical about kids feeling increased societal pressure from which they need to escape, blah blah blah.  I'm not philosophical to that extent.


To me, this pattern should be telling parents to WAKE THE HELL UP AND SEE WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE DOING!


In the interest of full disclosure, I don't have kids.  I don't presume to know what it is like to raise kids in today's world and, to be honest, it scares the living daylights out of me to even think about it.  I think if I had a child, I'd be tempted to lock Junior in a safe room with no computer and no internet and no television.  


Kids already have a strike against them because they think they are immortal.  I know I did when I was a boy when it came to some things.  But I really think I had a fair amount of common sense.


I can see myself as a fifteen year old boy and someone asking me if I wanted to play the choking game.  I would be instantly suspicious for a couple of reasons.  When I was fifteen, no one ever asked me to play anything, unless the gym teacher made them let me play on their dodgeball team.  Secondly, anything with the word "choking" in it would have thrown up a red flag as something not fun.  So when they explained that it was played by them putting their hands around my throat and cutting off the blood circulating to my brain until I passed out because I'd get high from it, I would have wasted no time getting home and locking the doors.  Maybe I would have even put a turtleneck on to protect my throat, but I doubt it.  I wasn't a coward.  Besides that, I never owned a turtleneck.

We all engage in self destructive behaviors.  Many people smoke.  Many people eat things they shouldn't in quantities they shouldn't.  Many people drink too much.   

I certainly have my own vices that I know are against my doctor's orders.  Some of us are either oblivious to how quickly the finish line approaches or we are willing to take the chance in exchange for some pleasure out of life.  As adults, we know better a lot of the time.

But, where is the disconnect from when I was fifteen years old back in the 80's and a fifteen year old today who is snorting bath salts and dying from it?  Something has clearly changed.  Admittedly, the first thing I think when I read an article about the latest dangerous thing teens are doing to get high, is "how stupid is that?".

Is it stupidity?  Lack of common sense? I don't have the answer.  I have an opinion that it starts at home.  But it's only an opinion.  If I had a fifteen year old daughter, who is to say she would not be doing the same things?  The first time I heard anything about her participation in an activity like that, I guarantee I'd be at The Home Depot buying building materials for that safe room.

I have never been high.  I've never smoked a joint.  I've never snorted anything but the occasional nasal spray when I've had a cold.  Even getting drunk does not bring me pleasure.  I don't see the appeal of getting high.  So maybe that is why I can't imagine anyone risking his or her life to make it happen.  

I do not judge those who partake in mind and/or mood altering substances.  I have had plenty of friends who did.  They do not need my judgment.  Besides that, they are adults and they know what they are doing.  Without getting into the issues of legalizing pot and all that, I can say if someone wants to smoke a joint, more power to them.   I don't hang around if someone is smoking a joint.  I hate the smell.  And trying to have a conversation with someone who is stoned is just really not a good time, in my opinion.  I personally think it would be rude to toke yourself into oblivion if you're having a conversation with me.  Then again, who's to say that having a conversation with me wouldn't drive you to it?    

In my humble opinion, smoking pot is completely different than spraying paint into a bag and then sticking your face inside and taking deep breaths.  That, I would deem as dangerous and while I've never been in that situation, I like to think I would try to intervene on someone's behalf.  (This is probably not the time or place, but as a side note, you know how hard it is to get paint off your fingers when you're spray painting a lawn chair or something?  Now imagine trying to remove it from your eyebrows and your nose.  See what I'm saying?)

Maybe that is the key.  Maybe no one intervenes anymore.  I don't know.

What I do know is there are a lot of young people who have crossed the big finish line long before they really ever started the race.