The trouble with kids today

Kids today have many troubles, but the main trouble is that a good lot of 'em are not the lazy drug-addled apathetic shits that we were at that age.

In my era, the adage of the day was "fire one up, and let the day go up in smoke."

Now it's "fire one up, and let's get to work."

Huh?

Just got off the phone after discussing for an hour or so the travails of another father my age. Seems we both had daughters who just had to take that high-school trip to Europe.

That's a popular accoutrement to a high-school education these days. The kids get a tour of The Continent, cradle of Western Civilization and all that shit, and the teachers get a free trip.

Why not?

So both our kids go to Europe, and of course they both want to stay there.

I was able to reason with Junior, but alas, Buddy lost that battle. His kid moved back to the old country.

And here's where it gets at once dodgy and hopeful. Buddy's daughter happened to take a fancy to a French kid who was apprenticing to be a baker. And not just any kind of baker, but a hippy-dippy back-to-the-18th-century-recipes kind of baker.

In France.

Ya.

I know!

Get the fuck outta here, right!?

Well, here's why this is a hopeful story.

Those kids, of their own volition, are managing to figure out ways to get around the immigration regulations that their elders enshrined in the law. After all, on the face of it, some random Canadian hottie couldn't just take a shine to a French chef and mosey off to France...

But they're doing it!

And good on them!

At the same time, they got nothing on those folks walking, WALKING!!!, from Sudan and Eritrea and Niger and Nigeria and Syria and Afghanistan and on and on...

WALKING TO EUROPE!

Here's the point; kids today are not ready to settle for the fucked up world we left them.


And that's a good thing.