Sitting.

I took the bus to and from the ballgame yesterday. In the last leg of my journey home, I was seated near an older Asian grandmother lady with two young boys. I'm talking like six and nine or so. Young kids. One was playing some old school handheld video game - like the ones I had when I was a kid, with two buttons and maaaaybe a directional control thing too. The younger of the two was playing games on the grandma's cell phone. All was well and good until the grandmother needed to see the phone for some reason or another. At that point, the little kid started freaking out and grabbing at the brother's game.

This incident got me thinking: kids today never just sit, unless it's a punishment and they get sent to time out. I was taught from a very young age to sit and behave myself. Granted, looking like you're in your twenties at the tender age of twelve doesn't help, but long before that, I just had to sit. I had old country Swedish grandparents who took no guff, so we had to sit quietly and at least attempt to follow along with what was going on. We didn't get hand-held games. We didn't have a TV in any room that we could run and watch while the grown-ups talked. Once in a blue moon I'd get to bring some comic books along, but that was a rarity too. So we did one thing: sit. We'd sit for hours at times. Conversation around my sister and I wasn't always even in English, but we'd sit quietly and try to piece together what was going on. Yes, there was some time for fun or goofiness, but there was also a hell of a lot of sitting. Don't even get me started on car trips. Let's just say I got my first walkman when I was like eleven, and have LOVED music ever since. But before then, I just had the comfort of a humming engine to keep me company in the car. We didn't have in-dash DVD players, there were no captain chairs that swiveled to gather around a table, and there sure as hell were no video game consoles.

If you look at the average day for most kids outside of a classroom, there is either a cell phone going off or a TV or computer or ipod or video game or something going at all times to keep these little shits stimulated. Every moment there is some sort of crazy noise in the background, or some video thing that kids can go into a trance watching. Yes, I do it when I'm out at the bar and there's a TV too, but I grew up without a lot of that. Still, all of this thinking brought my mind back to teaching; this whole tech culture and world of distraction has led to this fact -- teachers these days are fucked. How the hell can you be expected to keep kids in one seat, focused on one subject for an hour at a time? I know it's the role of the teacher to mix things up here and there, but even still, there are points where you have to lecture, and how the hell are you expected to do that if everyone's looking for like an interactive menu or some sort of multimedia entertainment in the middle of it?

The irony of it all is that half of these kids are the ones who end up going to coffee shops and all that later on in life. What is it they do at these coffee shops? That's right: sit. It's all a vicious cycle. Just look at me. I'm sure there is some young up-and-coming kid out there in my cafe right now talking shit about me on the internet because I read with headphones on when I'm in public, and it doesn't make sense because I can do that for free at home. Well fuck you, imaginary kid; I come to the cafe for coffee and an escape from the distractions that are in my personal Bagg's End.

On a loosely tied in note, I have again discovered the wonders of putting your whole iTunes collection on random and seeing what the hell comes up. I recommend you try it. Wait and see what turns up....