A Happy Little Story

As an old curmudgeon, I’m fully entitled to join my peers and complain about “this next generation.” They can’t read anything longer than a soundbyte and most haven’t read a book in 10 or 20 years. They walk around with their head buried in their phones, order driverless Waymo cars to take them places they could easily get to by bus or (imagine!) walk. They have no patience for old black-and-white classic films and gorge themselves on super-hero Hollywood shlock. They’re skilled at ordering Door-dash but barely know how to cook for themselves. They work at jobs seated in cubicles looking at screens for most of the day. In short, they’re a sorry mess!

 

And yet. In my experience, almost none of that is true. Consider my day today. 

 

San Francisco has cooled down from at 85-degree heat wave to a 75 degree one—warm enough for my wife Karen and I to eat lunch outside on our deck. While eating, I heard the faint cries of “Dad! Mom!” and thought, “Hmm. Or those the kids next door?” Imagine my shock when I peeked down the hall and saw my daughter at the door with her fabulous boyfriend Matt. (They had been ringing the bell, but it is a quiet one and neither Karen and I had our hearing aids in.) What?!! Why are they here? Could this be an unheard of “drop-in visit?” The kind I knew in my childhood and certainly my college years and then virtually disappeared in the modern urban world of scheduling every visit.

 

Indeed it was! They were in the middle of an 8-mile walk across the city from their home to Baker Beach. They were about halfway through that trip and on the way, so they decided pay us an unexpected visit. In they came dressed in their shorts and joined us on the deck. They shared the plan of walking out their front door to go all the way to the beach to dip their feet in the ocean while it was still warm enough and then take a bus back from there to their house. And (brace yourself!), they purposefully left their phones at home (!!!) to be more wholly present with each other, with the people they passed, with the trees and flowers and ocean waters. 

 

On our deck, I shared some of the delicious tortilla soup I had made last night and thanked them again for the dinner they made for Karen, her brother and I last week and the delicious chicken-with-dates-and farro they had cooked. We got talking about the various books we’re reading. Both Talia and Matt (and Karen and I) are avid lifelong readers and sometimes we discover we’re reading the same books. (Like now, Karen and Tali reading My Friends by Frederik Backman and Matt and I reading The Brothers K by David James Duncan). They shared a few stories from their week of teaching. Matt is a P.E. teacher at a public high school in Oakland and spends his days playing games with kids and getting them to both exercise their bodies and their spirit of cooperation with each other. Talia is the 5^th grade teacher at the same progressive school she went to for 11 years, the same one my wife and I taught at for 42 and 45 years. Here she is in her 16^th year teaching the kids  poetry, good writing, good thinking, good caring and the knowledge needed to work for social justice and I think it’s safe to say these 10 and 11-year-olds know more about all of the above than most of our representatives in Congress. 

 

In short, both Talia and Matt and their friends and my other daughter Kerala and the many, many people I know in their 30’s and 40’s, are the polar opposite of the kind of people I described in that first paragraph. (Except for the black-and-white films— Talia is impatient with them, but she has seen them at least once and I’d like to think they hold some special place in her memory! Also, for the record, I wish she’d go to jazz clubs once-in-a-while. Again, at least if I take her, she knows how to listen and appreciate.). So perhaps statistically the portrait of her generation I opened with may be true, but not in my experience.

 

We walked with Talia and Matt to The Yellow Submarine, the shop in our neighborhood founded in 1971 and pretty much the same woman and now her son working there. They took their lunch to the park, Karen and I went to the On the Run shoe store, founded in 1979 and still going strong. The Brooks Brothers shoes I keep getting when my last pair wears out? Still being made, in the same style (but much higher price!) after 25 years of wearing them. 

Walking back, we passed a newly opened lunch place making Japanese style sandwiches with a line of 20 people waiting outside. People are happy to keep supporting the tried-and-true old-time businesses, while leaving room for new ones and enjoying trying them out. 

 

Then walking back through the park, we paused at Big Rec playing field to watch a Frisbee football game. Mixed groups of men and women and all colors and so beautiful to watch their athletic artistry— almost breathtaking at times. So here they were, this next generation of young people, not hunkered down in dark basements playing video games, but out in the fresh air playing a pick-up game with no official sponsors or big-screen TV’s or exorbitant ticket prices. What was this? The 50’s?!

 

In the recent Singing Time I did in a Portland School, led by questions related to the songs we sang, I was so impressed that many of the 4^th graders knew where some of the names of the months came from, knew the story of Demeter and Persephone, recognized Martin Luther King’s 1963 speech when I quoted it and more. They were well-informed, well-read, curious, enthusiastic, good singers and had such fun with partner-clapping games with motions. Again, the statistics tell a different story, but from where I stand, kids are still kids and many much more knowledgeable, skillful, savvy and kind than I was as a kid. 

 

So there you have it. None of this negates the other news coming in about kids of all ages, but I share it to show that all is not lost. There are plenty of young people who still love to read and cook and ride buses and walk and hike and backpack and exercise and work in community-minded workplaces and teach the next generations what they need to know to lead happy fulfilled lives with great care for others. That’s today’s news and I hope it uplifts you more than the other kind.