Back to the ... Future... hmm.. is that title already taken?

Chuck Thompson | The Sunday Column

OPINION / HUMOR – A while back there were a few teenagers or college kids who were asking people in the parking lot of the grocery store if adults were jealous of young people alive today - it was obviously for a social media thing or whatever. They didn’t ask me but the answer I heard was almost exactly what I was going to say: No.

And though the woman didn't expand on her answer, I'm sure what she was thinking was along the same lines as what I thought at that moment:

We’re not jealous of the youth today and what they have. They’re fake strong, overconfident and would cry if they lost their secret weapon: their phones. Sadly, they're nothing without their phones. They wouldn't last a week in the 90's.

Imagine someone who thinks “words are violence” having to deal with …

A). A kink in the kitchen phone cord... That’s real violence - trying to get that flipped backwards kink out of the phone cord.

B). Remembering phone numbers by memory alone, and how to get through Charlotte or any big city without GPS.

Hand these kids a map and tell them to drive through any large city and see if they can do it.

Make them wait in line for a couple hours or take a long car ride without their phones and force them to look out the window in the passenger seat and see if they don’t cry or maybe be possibly be enthralled at the beauty around them.  

Or maybe try:

C). Searching for your friends or family during an emergency, when they’re not at home - where do you start? You can’t text them and don’t have a clue where they went, because you probably don’t have a mobile phone

D). Missing the bus, or sick at school, or accidentally getting left somewhere in the middle of nowhere and there’s no pay phone to use, or the pay phone is "out of order."

Imagine teenagers today living just 2 weeks when even I was a teenager and not be completely traumatized by VCRs & DVD players, playing sports for any high school or college coach in the 20th Century (back when they could actually really yell and insult you), or having to wait until a TV show was actually on TV at a certain time, and recording your favorite songs off the radio on cassette - or let’s even fast forward a little bit to the late late 90's and early 2000’s and having to download and burn your own CDs.. lol

It sounds silly, but to them it would be a nightmare.

Imagine having email - but dial up internet, late fees for movies you had to leave the house to go rent & return, and having to call a friend's house and the parents answer the land line and tell you it’s too late to call.

And what about how teenagers' biggest fear before smartphones was picking up a phone and having to make a phone call and talk to anyone - out loud - anyone at all on the phone…

E). Imagine calling your girlfriend and her dad answering the phone - 20 million billion times -  you don’t know fear or respect until you deal with that on a constant basis.

I graduated high school in 1997

I doubt I could survive two weeks in 1968 without being traumatized, although looking back - 1968 was probably a lot more similar to 1997 than 1997 is to 2026.

(29 years apart from then and now)

It’s amazing how much has changed so quickly.

Survive just a little bit in the 1990's and then earn my respect. It’s not even that difficult… (for me)

Am I jealous? No, I’m worried to death that the “never had to do anything difficult” generation will be in charge one day … and with any luck, by the grace of our merciful God, Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior, I’ll be dead - or at least senile and in a nursing home.

Actually... Take me to the nursing home now. Let's get this over with before I change my mind.

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