ND wrote:
Yeah, but there really quite similar to previous generations, with the
following exceptions.

1) They dress better. Its a generalization, but they seem to wear much more
expensive clothes, have expensive haircuts, and are in general more coiffed
the when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's. When I was a kid guys never would
have put hair gel in there hair or wore an earing. It would have earned you
an ass kicking.

2) They drive better cars. When I got my license I drove a 74 plymouth
satellite my friends nicknamed *the beast*.

3) They have more expensive gadgets, especially cell phones. Even if they
had been available, theres no way most parents of my generation would have
footed an additional monthly bill for a kids cell phone.

Basically they seem to have more money to spend. I don't resent them
although I think its natural for the older generations to have some contempt
for the younger ones. Many(not all) young people need to get life's attitude
adjustment before they really can be considered adults.

3 Things everyone eventually needs to learn a

1) The world doesn't need you.
2) The world doesn't want you.
3) So you better find a way to make yourself useful.

You end very sensibly, but early on you had me gasping with laughter.
If you think girl's tops so tight they make even skinny kids look
bulbous by squeezing out the body tissue and boy's pants that look as
if they're hanging well down, with a load dropped in them, are examples
of dressing better---well, I guess that goes along with the oddity of
some of the "coifs" that you seem to admire.

But, then, I was a kid in the '40s and '50s and that was a period when
"a little dab'll do ya" for hair styling goo. Plain, old fashioned
grease, some of it sheep grease (Wildroot Cream Oil, with a lanolin
base).

We needed attitude adjustments as well, but not such severe ones,
because we'd long since found out that the only one who really cared
for us was our mamma--and many of us weren't too sure about that.
That's the era of "Nobody loves you but your momma, and she might be
jivin' too."

They don't drive better cars than I did, but I worked from 12 to 19 to
save for mine, a '57 Chev convertible, 283 V8 with the Duntov package.

Telephones? The only reason we had a phone at all was because my mother
was an RN, and was sometimes on call. I called home from Kaneohe Bay,
HI on my 21st birthday, and the phone bill was $120. Takes a whole
bunch of talking to get there today.

We, at least, had a fairly cherry outlook on life, though we had to
live with the bomb and the Cold War. I really wouldn't care to be a
teenager today.