| Is it no longer cool to be smart? I mean, how smart is Hanna Montana or the Jonas Bros? You have to fit in, you know--and no one loves a nerd. I CONSTANTLY have to preach to the kids that it is OKAY to be smart, to study and do well in school. The pressures are clearly the other way. (Being rich is another topic). So that's why I think these activities like soccor have taken on a more important place. That and sport specialization, which is yet another deal. It used to be that there were preps, jocks, burnouts, and nerds in schools--but it isn't that simple anymore. But with this "soccor mom" culture there is a dumbing down, and I don't exactly know how to put it but it may simply come back to not wanting to be a nerd. It's not cool to be a nerd, to put it into my langauge. On Friday I took my daughter to a ceremony to open the soccor season for her. It was held at a huge soccor park that the City of Redding laid out for--eight soccor fields made of artificial turf and food/bathrooms/playground for kids. All the teams paraded around one of the fields. I hate to say it but there were so many hot women--soccor moms, it was ridiculas. So I was watching this and thinking about the political cliche' about soccor moms (snicker: better half was at work). Then of course to kick things off before the parade a young lady got on the microphone and sang the national anthom with a country lick to it. Then the kids started parading in, team by team, and that took forever. And sure enough at the end of the parade a politician got up on the microphone and said that the mayor couldn't be here and then said what a great guy the mayor was and how they were so happy about this soccor park that they had built on taxpayer and then entry and food court fees. I kind of hurled a little in my mouth, but honestly I was more interested in looking around at all the hot soccor moms--it just was ridiculas how much honey was standing around. It used to be . . . you could get together with your friends in the hood and hang out by the pickup truck and smoke a joint or go cruizing the main street of town after drinking a few beers or just get together with friends in the hood and play kick the can or baseball or whatever. But now in gated communities . . . people who do drugs are generally losers and you wouldn't want your kids or anyone else hanging out. There are exceptions and it really doesn't apply to the older generation of pot smokers . . . BUT . . . even if pot isn't so strong with THC that one puff will get you high, drug use is generally associated with illness, criminal activity and/or losers today. NOT with being cool. Being a burnout isn't cool anymore, really. Combine the attitude about burnouts with the psychos and the losers out there, parents have become really protective of their children, restrictive of them. Coaches in particular have to be really careful about touching players. Same with teachers. So there has emerged a new class of cool. New ways of thinking about the 'burnouts'. It is cool to text your friends and come over and hang out and play some music on the guitar or play a game of Scrabble with your girlfriend or have your young friend come to the soccor game with you and afterwards play with extremely expensive American Girl dolls. It is not cool to play by yourself with a Radio Shaak 1000 in 1 electronics kit. I am not exactly sure what I am trying to say, but I agree with Tim about a dumbing down that is occurring in the math and sciences. |