The Random Thoughts of a Sometimes Bored White Guy

I always dreaded the day that I would start “showing my age.” I knew it would happen before I got old, per se. I figured that at some point, there would be something that would get my nerves, my first reaction would be “those kids today!” and I’d be ready to cart myself to the nursing home before I’d even turned 30.

The challenge in this case is: how on earth could anyone be any more annoying than the whining, depressing and self-righteous-while-slacking than my generation? We co-opted every form of laziness (myself included) and seemed destined to never better ourselves in any, way, shape or form. I looked around at my graduating class in 1995 and said to myself, “Yep, we’re teenagers. And by God, do we ever show it.”

Now, I’m 27, that age where you’re old enough to look down at the next generation but young enough to associate with many of them. You’d figure that teaching undergraduate students would be the experience that would make me lose faith in humanity until I then remember being surrounded by people who sat struggling to fill in the first blank when we got our Antro/Soc midterm. I suppose the fact that “Name:” wasn’t phrased in the form of a question had thrown them off.

Nah, nothing that the next generation of youngsters could do to make me think that they weren’t, at the very least, on par with Generation X. Alas, I’ve underestimated how vapid people can become. The evidence need go no further than someone trying to add me to an online friend list like so:

“hEY yOU’Re PreTy cuTe, lIke thAt pIc wIth yOuR Cat, hE’s A cUTie :p aWww :) aNyHoW, aDd me Up lUV to cHaT!!! :) :)”

OK; far from me to be on a high horse here. I’m as much partial to using lame-ass internet abbreviations “LOL” when I’m neither laughing out loud or blending the names of Oasis brothers. I slip up when spelling things. I often spell “love” “luv” like a stupid valentine’s candy designer. I’m as flawed as anyone on these parts. But when it takes me just as long to read one sentence with no words longer than six letters while than it does to read a paragraph from the works of Karl Marx, I think there’s a problem.

Let us review some of the problems with alternating caps. First of all, it makes typing harder than it’s supposed to be. Just typing up that sentence as an example forced me to consider cancelling my classes tomorrow. Second, it makes READING harder than it’s supposed to be; it’s the difference between walking a straight line and having to walk jagged abrupt inclines. And finally, every person that communicates to me strikes me not as a friend or as a real person but as someone with a business proposition that I would normally receive in about 20-30 junk e-mail a day. You know the ones....

“mAkE iT biGGEr!! sHe wiLL bE caLLing OuT fOr Moree!”
“ViEWmYWeBcAm....IaMWeTanDHorNy!!XoXoxxoXoOOX”
“tHe HoNorAblE KinG AdIn nEEdS aN aMeRiCAn baNk aCCOunT fOR.....”


Either that or twelve year old schoolgirls. Oh ya, there’s nothing that as a responsible graduate student in his late-20s that I'd rather do than correspond with pre-pubescents and people trying to hawk pills, webcams and phony investment schemes. I’ll put on that on the queue with the sockhop and taping this week’s episodes of TRL.

My biggest fear, however, is that as this generation gets older that I will encounter this in other venues of my life. I’ll be proctoring an exam and 17 students will request extra time so they can re-write the questions in alternating caps so they can better understand them. I’ll go to the sporting event and read “hOmE - 2 ViSItOrs - 3" and the uniforms will read “jOhNsON”, “mARtiN” and “hE hATe mE.” I will leave the game and on the way home, I’ll stop off at the Needs to pick up some bEEf jErKy and cOcA-cOLa.

I just pray that we don’t start talking this way: alternating volume at inexplicable points. Then I’ll be forced to make the “up”, “the” and “already” parts quiet when I tell every person in the universe that I’m in no mood for discourse and anymore and would they “PLEASE SHUT the FUCK up already?”
It all has to be loud for me to get my emotions out but what’s the point if these kids don’t understand it?

Yup, I’m old before my time, just like I predicted. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll call a cab to take me to “pINeWooD VaLLeY HoMeS.”

BMN