It's 9AM.
Don’t Mess with Texas.
Brush your breath with Dentyne.
Have a Coke and a smile.
All shorthand for a youth.
A little Dab will do ya’.
Let’s all go to the lobby.
Shorthand for the youth before mine.
Now it’s Cap.
And Bet.
And Bruh.
Before that we got jiggy.
Fo’ Shizzle.
Isn’t slang gnarly?
Tubular but not timeless.
I saw a story about a woman who got carded buying liquor.
The kid behind the counter barely glanced at her id.
She said “you couldn’t have read it that fast.”
He said, “I just saw the 19.”
It made her want to cry.
Because we are now as far from the 80’s as the 80’s were from WWII.
So much for a Back to the Future we deserved.
Maybe some of the backwards movements we are making are what we earned instead.
There are some Moms in this state trying to ban books.
You’ve read most of them.
They were part of the curriculum when the years still started with 19.
Brave New World
1984
Almost manuals of the kind of world we are or could become.
Get them banned before people figure it out.
Animal Farm didn’t make the list.
For two reasons.
They probably didn’t read it in the first place.
Cliff Notes were really popular, so they just got the gist.
And they think it’s a book about farming.
Or raising cattle.
They call themselves Moms of Liberty, but there’s not much freedom in banning books.
It reminds me of what happened back in 19-something.
A bunch of Mom’s got together to “protect the children” and came out against rock and roll music.
They were the Moral Majority, led by self appointed leaders who knew what was best for you.
Because you weren’t smart enough to know what you liked or didn’t like.
They burned records and cassettes, because it was before CD’s and digital downloads.
They made huge bonfires and preached about saving kids from Knights in Satan’s Service and shaking their heads at a Black Sabbath.
What they did was highlight all the stuff kids ran right to.
Like creating a shopping list for what could be picked up at Hastings or Best Buy or even in the music section of a rapidly expanding Wal Mart.
The Moral Majority made more music millionaires than any Sunset Blvd record exec.
And now the Moms of Liberty are back at it.
Except they don’t want kids to read books by dead people who had time to think.
I don’t know if I want to cede my thinking to any group that wants to ban stuff.
Especailly books.
I mean, if you’re a free market capitalist, shouldn’t you let the market decide which books shouldn’t make the cut.
And if you think librarians are packing the shelves with subversive material, shouldn’t you read it first, before you decide if it is in fact going to shift the thinking of modern youth.
They want to ban TikTok because it’s spying on kids.
Kids are not worth spying on.
They want to ban books that give alternative viewpoints and lifestyles.
But for the majority of kids, 85% if stats are true, they won’t be swayed to a new lifestyle by something they read in a work of fiction.
15% will think they are being represented.
My English teachers back in the 19’s noticed I liked to read.
And recommended a lot of books.
And my Dad had a shelves of Stephen King and VC Andrews and a lot of Mack Bolan and Ian Fleming.
I bought Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert Howard collections all by my lonesome.
My young developing mind packed with murder, and slavery and incest and mysogny and an unnatural prejuidice against Belgians.
Except I am none of those things.
None of it stuck with me or swayed me or changed me in any way except to expose me to a world much larger than Pine Bluff Arkansas.
A world I wanted to explore and did and learned and played in and with.
I learned that not everybody is like me, and they have different thoughts, opinions and attitudes.
I learned this over beer most of the time, and never once got carded overseas.
They probably just saw the 19 and let it go.
MARCH MADDNESS BIG BOOK GIVEAWAY
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Bravo for saying out loud what so many think! I rather fear kids today are not the rebels and knowledge seekers we kids of the " last century" ( to quote my grandkids ) were, which is very sad in its own way...
It's amazing how narrow a mind can get when it's never exposed to anything else.