The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Some researcher, no doubt hunting for a good topic for his PhD thesis, did a follow-up survey on high school seniors, asking them before they graduated How Important they considered themselves. In the Gallup study 65 years ago, only 12% answered Very Important, probably the kids on their way to Harvard, Yale and maybe the Korean War. In 2005 80% of seniors responded with high marks for themselves. This kind of tectonic shift is what gives sociologists tenure. And tenure probably gives them a sense of being Very Important too.

My boomer generation has spent decades instilling self-worth into their prized progeny. Every crayon drawing is framed before mounting on the refrigerator. Classes in ballet and gymnastics and soccer and flute and yoga for kids and golf and tennis and art … all are vehicles for discovering that special talent we let lie dormant and hidden until it was too late for us, too late, but not, by god, for our kids.

Now, of course, the little peepers got Facebook. Everyone is his or her very own press agent, forever updating the photos, refining the resume, bragging on-line. If you spent hours every damn day of the year looking at your Bragbook, wouldn’t you think you’re Very Important?

Gonna be a total shock, the real world, for those 80% when their new boss doesn’t give a rip about their Facebook page except to ferret out reasons not to hire them in their interview, when they discover ‘friends’ aren’t, when they’re confronted by bad jobs or no jobs, high rents, bills, health issues, lowered expectations, the tsunami of stuff that knocks the feet from under VIP’s as well as the losers with low self esteem. Go back to the high school reunion, the one for the class of 1950. I bet the % of us folks who answered Very Important back when went down even further. Life is good at one thing — at least down here on the South End — it teaches us modesty. Those 80%, trust me, they’ll learn it the hard way. But they’ll learn it.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, September 14th, 2024 at 5:56 am and is filed under rantings and ravings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.