Days gone by

Pat Fule
Fule for Thought

 

First of all, I’d like to apologize to any curler who may have been offended by last week’s column. If it makes you feel better, I got to spend more quality time sleeping out in my re-purchased Mustang!
It was while I was visiting curlers, and burping one, that I started to think of how times have changed. I better explain. After a hard fought win, I was patting my pal Kane on the back for a job well done. It was at that exact moment that he let out a belch. I felt like I had him over my shoulder and was burping him. However, that’s cute when the kid is six months old, not 52! I did check to see if I had any beer soaked nachos or spittle on me! Phew … no schrapnel!
I got to thinking (because my mind, at curling rinks, wanders) about kids today vs. kids in my day. Growing up in the late 60s and mid 70s was way different than now. Back then, moms and dads were not “Snowplow”or “Helicopter” parents.
These, I’ve read, are parental types who smooth all obstacles from in front of their kids, or they hover over them making sure they’re treated well, and helped a great deal. Today’s parents (and I’ve done this, too) make sure that little Johnny and Emma have every opportunity to succeed.
When I was growing up, if you failed a test, you failed … there were no re-tests. There were deadlines for things, and you lost marks for late assignments. Nowadays, that’s not the case, with a move to no zeroes or penalties for late assignments. There can be a danger of creating a sense of entitlement in some students. I had a guy hand in a test, and while doing so, he asked, “when’s the re-test?”
“Uh, there is none,” I replied. “Remember, the last week of us reading and discussing Act II, and my riveting review with you in yesterday’s class? No, huh … well, there’s no re-test … we had plenty of class time to get everything straight, and you never even asked one question!”
I thought back to what sarcastic comment my old English teacher would have given me back in 1977!
Ah, the Seventies! You organized your own sports games with pals, you didn’t need Mom or Dad to be on boards to plan out each day’s activities. Do our kids even know how to just go out and play, anymore? We organize and supervise the kids’ whole lives. We can’t bear the thought of injuries, so we bubble wrap them all. If you lived in a small town in the 70s, you didn’t wear a bike helmet. If you did, there would have been many choice comments coming your way! I know helmets are safer, but we had long hair in the 70s, and helmets would’ve messed up our hair. Besides, I never knew one kid in all my hundreds of hours of riding, who ever hurt his head! Sure, Joey’s front tire got kicked in a bike race, he did go over his handlebars, and he did swear a lot at Brian after impact, but he still had no head injury (we always thought the head injury happened way before we met him!).
Parents didn’t worry about the environment as much as now, either. Why, Friday after school meant one thing to my brother and me. Yep, we got to light the “burning barrel” chock full of the week’s garbage, and watch everything melt and burn. Sure, there may have been toxic chemicals coming off plastics, painted cans, and everything else. What a great way to end a tough week at school!
School in the 70s was also different. We had a lot of educated “flower children” teachers with new methods (I’ll bet they drove old teachers nuts, too!).
In Social Studies 7, we got to go in groups, create our tribes, and make artifacts out of clay and whatever else we could find. Then, they’d send us out into the school field where we’d dig holes, and bury our tribe’s artifacts. Days later, we’d be led around on architectural “digs.”
They actually gave wild Grade 7s shovels and picks to dig up other tribes’ things. The object was to deduce what each tribe was based on, and write reports. Ah, the shovel battles … the inserting of garbage and fake artifacts to screw up other groups. Kids running with shovels is also not such a good thing … helmets would have helped more for that, than for our bike rides!

(“Fule for Thought” is a slice of life humourous column that appears in the Strathmore Times, written by long-time resident, town councillor, high school teacher, coach, husband and father of two – Pat Fule. If you would like to get in touch with Pat, you can send him an e-mail at Pat.fule@shaw.ca)