I get two newspapers a day, watch way too much cable news, and even vote in local elections, so I should be in touch with the times today, but whenever I start getting close I come down with a bad case of the shakes.
Seems the condition’s going around a lot these days. I’ve got one buddy who has to get up and leave the dinner table every time his grandkids act up because he knows he’s going to say something that’s going to start a fight.
Their parents refuse to discipline the kids beyond a few tepid words of “please don’t do that.” The kids totally ignore them, and their parents allow it, which drives him crazy.
He remembers how his parents handled the situation, and he doesn’t recall the word “please” ever coming up in conversation. Neither do I. In my house, if you acted like a brat, you got the stare – the evil eye, my Italian mother called it.
That was enough to get me sitting up straight eating my peas. Give kids the evil eye or yell at them today, and their parents think they’re doomed to a lifetime of therapy.
In my high school, the guy everyone looked up to was the football coach, Roy Vujovich, who also taught a basic math class. I was doing a story on the Class of ’54 having its 50th year reunion when one of Roy’s former students walked up and said, “Coach Vu, remember me? I was in your basic math class, the kid who never shut up.
“Remember that day you took me out in the hallway and pinned me up against the lockers? I thought you were going to kill me. Thanks, coach, you really straightened me out.”
Then he gave coach Vu a hug. Today, Roy would be slapped with a lawsuit and fired, not thanked. The class of ’54 obviously never got the message that they were out of touch with the times.
Frankie Goodman probably protected more kids from bullies than all the police officers and sheriff’s deputies in the Valley combined. He ran a boxing gym in Van Nuys where every Saturday morning fathers from the suburbs would bring their sons in to learn how to defend themselves.
Frankie asked only one thing: Bring your last report card with you. He wanted to make sure you were listening and doing well in school because he didn’t want to waste time on kids who wouldn’t listen.
He had some important things to tell them, and the first was to never pick a fight. Always try to walk away. But if you find yourself cornered by a bully, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to knock his block off. And Frankie showed them how.
Today, he’d be pillared for inciting youth violence, instead of thanked by fathers for teaching their sons how to defend themselves against bullies. I’m just glad Frankie didn’t live long enough to see how out of touch with the times his thinking had become.
I also never figured Bill Aupperlee, Curly Elliot, Joe Mariani, George Keene, and the all the Pearl Harbor survivors I’ve had the honor of writing about over the years would be so out of touch with the times, either.
When this country needed them to fight a world war, they didn’t wait to be drafted. They ran to the induction office with their buddies and enlisted. Many of them were not even 18 yet, and had to lie about their age to get in or get their parents to sign a waiver if they were still 17.
Today, there’d be an outbreak of bone spurs if WW III broke out.
Coach Vu, Frankie Goodman, the Pearl Harbor survivors, and so many more from that generation taught us discipline, respect, obligation, and common sense.
With handicaps like that, how could we ever be in touch with the times today?
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.
from Daily News http://bit.ly/2GZQMiC
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