Too many of today's adults can rattle off buckets of stats about teams. Ask them about things that impact their lives, they don't have an opinion.

Contributed By:Dorothy Nevils

If you were born back far enough to have pulled down a crank, grabbed a rubber tube and poked it in a hole you opened by screwing to the left, then actually watched – and heard – the little numbers run up one by one until your tank was full, then you can probably relate to the novelty of a radio in a car.

When I was a kid, we didn’t have such. In fact, our first “car” was a truck, and it surely didn’t have a radio. The only radio we had was a big wooden one in the “front room” that wasn’t allowed to play secular music. That came later with transistor radios, then, later still, when I had my own car.

I remember driving to school or, in the summer, to southern Illinois with the kids to visit their grandparents. Jeff, the oldest, would be in the front. Music would be playing and, as soon as one song was finished and the announcer attempted to bring us up-to-date with a spot of news, his skinny fingers would reach over to turn the dial, and no matter how many times his movement was arrested with a meaningful look or a barked order, after a few miles and minutes, he’d try it again.

I had a thing about his turning the knob more often than I turned the wheel. “Leave it alone!” I’d bark, after two or three changes. Then I’d go into what kids call “sermons.”

As a grownup, it was my responsibility to alter my children’s behavior so they could actually move from childhood to adulthood. I believed then, as I still do, that adults are not powerless, that they do influence who kids will be as adults, that if they are not pointed toward adulthood as children, they will remain childish no matter what the calendar says…

That is a shame, as we have discovered over and over again, especially now. We are surrounded today by people who know absolutely nothing about what is going on or why.Too many of today’s adults can rattle off buckets of stats about teams, their best and worst records, their playoff probabilities…

Ask those same people about things that impact their lives, and the only sound is silence. They can’t name one of their state’s representatives. They are not aware of a single issue that will be decided by the people they didn’t elect… because they didn’t vote. They don’t have an opinion… because that word means thought, a bit difficult when the only sense active is a sense of fun!

When will we be adult enough to steer our young toward reality… what is really important? We have witnessed what happens when a large segment of the population closes its collective eyes to everything unpleasant, choosing to live in a “say it isn’t so” world of darling emojis that make us feel all warm and fuzzy…

A train is bearing down on you, blaring its horn, an unwholesome sound. You can do one of two things: Cover your ears, close your eyes, and sing as loudly as you can your favorite song… or…get your butt off the track as quickly as possible, no matter how stinky the muck in which you land!

Story Posted:09/09/2017