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This is so true. https://t.co/nktn08BXm3

— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) October 6, 2022

Kinda depends on "where you grew up locally."

My neighborhood was a typical post-war Baby Boom neighborhood.  Only a few houses on the block didn't have children running in and out of them, and traffic was absolutely non-existent.  What traffic there was was either mothers going to the grocery store (or the hair salon), and fathers going to work in the morning, or coming home from work in the evening.  Almost as regular as Camazotz, to be honest.  We could play in the street (it was a block long residential street) all day, moving only when a car occassionally ambled by. We had no fear of predators, drunk drivers, gangs, etc.  Now, not a mile from where I sit, I know of gang activity (small, but dangerous to those involved/caught in the cross-fire, or just pissing off a gang member), attempted kidnappings of students walking to school, etc.  Hell, there's an ambulance called daily to a school in my school district (I'm not exaggerating, I know people who work in the school district).  In 12 years in public school I don't remember an ambulance coming to the school once, even the day of the fight/"riot" in high school.

I wonder how many of those things were typical in the '80's neighborhood Popehat & Co. grew up in.  Not to mention school shootings.  We trained (through elementary school, not really beyond) for nuclear bomb strikes.  Kids today are trained for school shootings, which, unlike nuclear war, is something that actually happens, and frequently. Teachers deal with students with peanut allergies (anaphylatic shock is fatal if not treated quickly), and get training in how to handle body fluids, including vomit (You don't just mop it up with paper towels like in the old days; too much risk of contagion and spread of same.).

I'm guessing that wasn't commonplace in the '80's, either.

I got a concussion once, in my backyard, playing football with my cousins on Thanksgiving.  I ran head down straight into a tree, and lost conscuiousness.  Nobody thought anything of it, including me, and I went to my bed until the headache abated.  Today I'd call an ambulance for that child.  Am I overprotective?

I mean, Hallowe'en was safe.  The worst thing that ever happened to me on Hallowe'en was getting an egg in my back walking home (on my street!) with my younger brother, the first time my parents thought he was old enough to go out with me alone.  I remember houses where reports were (I never walked the extra two blocks to get there; these houses were always two blocks away from wherever I was) you went inside to a fully decorated room and got to choose homemade candied apples and popcorn balls (!) and other such exotic treats.  No parent would want their child to cross that threshold today, much less take apples and popcorn balls (and what kid, in all seriousness, would want them?).

Some of that security and innocence is surely gone; but in some cases (no, not Hallowe’en candy) there's good reason for some of that.  I mean, I read this stuff and I imagine this:

The "old folks" complaining imagine themselves on the left, and the parents/kids these days on the right.  Pretty much, probably, how their grandparents saw them, when they were kids and their kids were the parents.

Old man angry that cloud will not debate him https://t.co/rYhLUygjur

— IfHatHadHappened (@Popehat) October 6, 2022

Mirror cracks when you look in it?

No, they aren't as clueless as that "intelligent person."  But who is the big dog, and who the small, in that tweet and the embedded one?

Now if you'll excuse me I have some clouds to shout at.