What have we done?

By Dan Barber

By allowing someone else to feed you, to house you, to provide all of your care can take away your free will.

How many of us have heard the phrase, from a well-meaning parent, “Eat what I have prepared for you or starve!” I’m sure that many of us, who were rebellious teens, heard Dad state, “While you’re living under this roof, you will follow my rules!” Then there is the fashion statement, “No child of mine dresses like that!”

Parents are just trying to provide what’s best for their children, but for most of us we couldn’t wait until we were old enough to gain our freedom from those rules.

Life is funny when we become responsible adults and parents, we remember those life lessons we inherited from our own parents, including the mandatory response to the question of why, with “Because I told you so!”

One might chuckle at those memories, but as a member of the “baby-boom” generation, I must apologize to society for what we have foisted upon you… the lessons of our parents.

A healthy diet will allow you to live longer so give up those big hamburgers and extra large fries, instead spend your long life eating raw fish and vegetables. Besides the farts of cows, pigs and chickens only pollute and it is cruel to eat them… raw fish is OK as long as they weren’t caught in an area polluted with mercury or radio-activity.

Tobacco use has been proven to be a health risk. I fully agree with this statement and support banning tobacco use in public places. I am one of those former smokers who got my exercise by walking to the designated smoking area in some back alley, who now finds the smell of tobacco smoke as disgusting. Also, seeing someone spit a brown stream of tobacco juice makes me want to puke.  

I now see people in line at the grocery store sucking on what looks like a crack pipe, but it is a device that delivers flavored vapors to the user. Some strawberry loving individual back in the 1960s might have been inspired by the song, “Strawberry Fields Forever” so they invented strawberry wine; I get that… now strawberries can be smoked. If someone likes the flavor of strawberries why don’t they just eat a strawberry instead of inhaling the flavor in the form of a vapor? I really don’t get it.

Back in the late 1980s I worked with an aged art director in Los Angeles who was stuck in the 1960s. He was a really talented graphic artist, who wore his long hair in a pony tail, and refused to wear shoes. He was convinced that legalizing hemp would be the cure for many of society’s woes to include many medical problems, he even wrote a book about his ideas. It seems that he and other like minded baby-boomers have gotten their way because marijuana is on the fast track of being legalized across the country, legitimizing those farming jobs in Northern California; creating Indonesian manufacturing jobs for hemp rope, clothing, sandals and water pipes just to name a few of the related industries. And a bonus is our government has another tax revenue source.

Smoking marijuana in public places is also now legally appropriate in some states. But, if you run into one of those individuals who indulge, don’t ask, “My goodness did you get sprayed by a skunk?”

Just yesterday I noticed what appeared to be a sixty-something gentleman walking down the street, probably heading to the “medical marijuana” shop that used to be the tobacco store, wearing black baggy shorts, flip-flops, a tie-dyed muscle shirt and a backward baseball cap most likely covering his bald spot, with the remaining long grey hair on the back of his head pulled into a pony tail… a mixed metaphor describing my baby boomer generation… or a free-spirited individual ignoring his parent’s dress code?

When your own children put you in the “Shady Acres” nursing home, don’t ask, “Why do I have to move in here?” You’ll get the standard reply, “Because we told you so.”