The times they are a changin’

By Pat Fule Random Thoughts

In case you haven’t noticed (or didn’t care), I try to use song titles as column titles, mainly because music has been huge in my life. I was a sickly kid in elementary school and missed a lot of time in one of the grades. It was CKXL Radio, the Buckshot Show and CFCN’s afternoon movies that helped me muddle through the recoveries. Sometimes, the movies would be good old-fashioned rock and roll or beach party ones, so I learned a lot of tunes.
One thing about my childhood (and maybe yours) in the ’60s and ’70s was that I had independence at a young age. I found out years later that the term for us was “latch key kids”.
In elementary school, my older brother and I were allowed to stay home alone for about an hour and a half before school, and about the same amount of time when school ended. I had our house key tied to a shoelace and that shoelace was tied to the belt loop on my pants. I loved it because I lived close enough to the school that I could pop home for lunch and hang out when school was over.
I’m not sure if many parents allow this anymore, but it worked for my brother and me. I recently read that about 20 per cent of American kids are latch key kids, and one writer discussed the change in parenting from having latch key kids to today’s “helicopter parenting” where there is constant supervision. He feels we’re raising a generation of wimps who aren’t able to make decisions on their own and they have less self-confidence. I don’t know which method is better, but the fear factor of parenting has definitely increased, where we feel there are strangers everywhere and bad things could happen. All I know is that for me I was proud to be a latch key kid, and I loved the freedom I had.
I’ve also read that a full 15 per cent of millennials are living with parents even in their adult years. In fact, it is starting to impact some parents’ retirement plans. I may sound like a grouchy old guy, but my generation couldn’t wait to get out on our own. To be living at home as an adult would be the kiss of death and a really good reason to be mocked. Maybe it was having dads who survived World War II, but ’70s kids had to live with stress. There were tests you had to endure, teachers you had to survive and school discipline that was backed by mom and dad. Nowadays, all that has changed, where teachers often have to justify actions taken to control little “Johnny” and his behaviour and bad grades. Maybe we’ve drifted to protecting our kids so much that we don’t focus on why little Johnny misses school and why he doesn’t work harder, why he feels he needs to be on his cell phone in class.
Even universities and colleges work to ensure students can deal with stress. You’ve probably heard of schools that bring in puppies to pet. One of my colleagues told me of a young lady writing her test in a crowded university gym. Every so often, she would get up and run a couple of laps around the gym. One professor finally stopped her and asked what she was doing. She explained that it was how she reduced her inner stress. The prof (quite rightly) told her that her actions only helped her and were raising stress for the other 300 plus students in the gym. Maybe we focus so much on an individual’s rights that we’ve begun to forget how what we do affects the larger group.
I’ve begun to wonder if working to totally eliminate stress is the right way to go. Maybe we need to have some stress in our lives, so that we can develop tools or strategies to conquer problems. Maybe to suffer stress also helps us appreciate and enjoy the good times more. There’s definitely an inner toughness that comes with studying and fretting the night before a test. I get that some people are adversely affected by stress, but to face the real world and all its stresses, sheltering and protecting may not prepare them for tough times.
I had a humorous example of this when I supervised high school final exams in our SHS gym. I had just given the exam rules to the students on the PA system and they had begun to write the various tests. I turned to a colleague and muttered, “look at some of these kids … they’re not rested, they’re not ready to write.”
“Mr. Fule,” one student whispered. “Your mic is still on.”
It was incredibly embarrassing, and I probably added to the stress of some of these students. At that time, I wished I had some puppies to pet, or that I could be the one to run out of the gym!
(Random Thoughts is a slice of life humorous column that appears in the Strathmore Times, written by long-time resident, current mayor, husband, father and grandfather – Pat Fule. He is also a former town councillor, high school teacher and coach. If you would like to get in touch with Pat, you can send him an e-mail at Pat.fule@shaw.ca)