Millennium Coming

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

-Socrates 


I'm going to keep it 100
but you've got to be willing
to jump into the way-back machine.

You need to see your gnarly roots
teased upside down like a baobab tree
digging upwards into the ozone.
Was there wisdom there?

As if! You don't remember
pants that were supposed
to parachute you safely
towards that righteous future.

Re-branded slackers landed in flannels
at that first taste of reality,
quickly swapping out radical for tubular

irrigation for boxed lawns 
in front of those ticky-tacky
houses that generations before disdained

so you could yell
at ancient eyed children
to get off of it.

Oh bae can't you see
these words were totes never about you
until you decided they were.


Song Choice: Kids from Bye Bye Birdie

This poem was created for the prompt offered at Imaginary Gardens With Real Toads: Dorogoy Droogs, Come Clockwork the Orange, where Bjorn challenges us to work in some slang into our poems.

Notes from the Real World: Nothing makes me roll my eyes faster than complaints about the kids today. I'll admit, I have to stifle a chuckle sometimes when I see a young adult sporting a mustache Dick Dastardly would admire, but since I spent my teen years gleefully seeking out clothing that looked like highlighters threw up all over them, I have no room to talk. Every generation has their own way of dressing, speaking, and being. And the generations that came before them will ever clutch their pearls and forget their own wild (and oftentimes silly) youth.

32 comments:

  1. "gleefully seeking out clothing that looked like highlighters threw up all over them"

    I remember those days fondly. :) Love this post.

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    1. I had this neon pink skirt with black lace overlay I loved! I wore it to multiple school dances, paired with fingerless gloves, granny boots and a hat that reminded me of something I saw in a DeBarge or Sheila E. video. I thought I looked pretty bitchin' 😂

      The kids can have their mustache wax. I hope they enjoy being young too.

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    2. Oh my gosh, I am freaking out over that outfit. You have pics?

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    3. My mom still might 😂

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    4. LOL, I'll raid the photo album next time I go visit!

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    1. I hope I'm around to see what the in things are in my great-grandkids' time.

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  3. Ha... I think we should never forget what we used to enjoy.
    In my case I do remember my leather tie and those broad shouldered jackets... and trousers so wide they always walked two steps behind me... Each generation need to have their own...

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    1. Sounds like you were the height of cool back in the day!

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    2. <3

      We should all have a throw-back dance.

      That would be a fun prompt, actually.

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    3. That would be an AWESOME prompt

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  4. I enjoyed this, Rommy! I love the way-back machine and the ‘pants that were supposed / to parachute you safely / towards that righteous future’; and the ticky-tacky houses took me back and had me singing that song ‘Little Boxes’!

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    1. I hoped that someone got that song reference too!

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  5. Each generation has their own style and challenges; it sounds like you proudly rocked the 80's. I love the reference to ratting your roots until teased upside down like a baobab tree. It made me giggle.

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    1. I remember that some of the girls' bathrooms in high school had their own misty atmosphere because of so many people adding that last layer of AquaNet for good measure before homeroom.

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  6. Goodness, we dressed in the slang and rode it all the way to uncool... Love this

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    1. LOL, we did. But hopefully we had a little fun too.

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  7. I'm seriously giggling right now. Because your poem sounds like one of the conversations I have with my brother. He's always complaining about the young doing this or that and how terribly irresponsible it is. Then I remind him what he used to do and he looks at me like, of course, it was not the same.

    And your note has me rolling. I'm pretty sure I had that shirt, lol!

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    1. Every few months I run into some old coot (who is around the same biological age as me) griping about kids and their weird spelling of words. I may or may not show them the opening of the Canterbury Tale written in the original middle English and mutter how no one spells things traditionally anymore. :D

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  8. Thanks for all the slang, a lot I didn't understand but you helped lot. I lived through at least two crazy times, the 50'60 and before that was over it was Hippie. I also wore pink shirts and ties and had a rather big lock of bleached blond running down with my bangs.
    ..

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    1. I don't remember the 60's, but I do remember the pink shirt, skinny tie and wild hair days.

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  9. I miss being a teen with the you were setting your feet down on a new land and making mistakes i.e. gaining experience. I smile at my own daughters being so concerned at the way their teenagers behave now breaking the rules when this did those very same things themselves!

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    1. Pretty much! It's all pretty funny when you get down to it.

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  10. Was nice to reminisce through your poem

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  11. I love the analogy of the baobab tree. An excellent piece.

    Wishing you a very happy New Year, Rommy.

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  12. Funny how similar nostalgia is to adjusted trauma. Good stuff.

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  13. You are so right about everything Rommy! I had a mohawk and dressed like Boy George! LOL!

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    1. I was all about the lace and puffed skirts. :D

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