Monday, September 25, 2006

Youth

A few of us were sitting around the office BSing today as the site is still down and there wasn't anything to do. We started out with some of the stupid stuff we did as kids that really should have maimed us badly if it didn't kill us outright. We all said that our kids don't seem to go out and stir up trouble like we did.

One guy who's Dad was career Army said his family didn't get a TV till he was 11 and permanently stationed state side, so he would be out of the house as quick as he could. The rest of us all had TV's, but Saturdays, cartoons were over at 10:00 AM, so we'd scoot until it was dinner time.

We didn't have computers, cell phones, DVD players that seem to keep kids in the house most of the day. I lived in the mountains just north of Los Angeles, so we'd be up the canyon having BB gun wars and digging mines, or just wandering the hills.

When we got to the asinine things we did with cars, we all talked about that first POS that we bought and spent half the time repairing. The water pump, the brakes that were shot when we got it and we put another 5,000 miles on till the squeal got annoying because we didn't have the cash being we had to buy the damn water pump. A car that squealed, but ran, was better than as safe car that wouldn't run.

When we started to talk about how nowadays you can't work on cars due to all the computers, we realized that anyone we had hired that was born after the mid 70's does not seem to have any mechanical skills. Most kids you hire for working a job that involves repair work, you literally have to start at the beginning with what a tool is and how to use it properly.

There are no Shop classes in Middle School, no Auto Shop in High School. They don't offer trade clases, everything is geared towards college or the technical fields. It's good to design a new device that will catch a mouse more efficiently, but who is going to build the damn thing?

No comments: