Who Changed The Rules?

Many moons ago in a boomer land far far away an ancient code held sway. Few strayed from that code.Those who did were considered outcasts, odd people, misfits. For all saw the wisdom of that code. The code predated boomer culture by many thousands of years. The code was simple:

• Teenagers try to be sneaky and get away with stuff.
• Adults try to catch them.
• Adults know this happens and spend a great deal of time and energy trying to catch kids.
• Sometimes adults  resort to ancient tactics "You know what you did wrong" in an attempt to trick kids.
• Few kids fell for that trick more than once.

It may have been a false world but that's the world I grew up in. Adult world and kid world did not mix. We did stuff we were not supposed to do like toilet paper and egg houses, smoke pot, chew tobacco, skinny dip in Mr Roger's pool ( a real person in my neighborhood), steal watermelons from the neighbor's garden, driving too fast, drink alcohol, jump from bridges too high (yes dad I would jump off a bridge if my friends did, especially if they double dog dared me).

Adults did stuff they were not supposed to do too. They drank too much sometimes,drove under the influence had affairs and cheated on their income taxes.

But these two worlds seldom mixed.When they did, everybody was uncomfortable because they knew that an ancient balance had been disrupted.Of course there were "cool" parents who smoked pot and drank with their kids. But they were oddballs.

Today, though, the rules have changed. Kid world and adult world mix far too often. Whether it's a mother throwing a kegger for her daughter's sweet sixteen birthday party or a grandmother buying her a grandson a bong for Christmas or parents giving kids cigarettes for babysitting, it's a world that baffles me. I have no answers but I do have a lot of questions.