America is Going Crazy

[erpowers]

Earlier this morning I watched a story on ABC's Good Morning America that showed how a family almost went to court because their children were playing in a pool in the family's back yard. The family is comprised of two parent and two girls. The girls on many occasions played in the pool in their back yard and made what can be considered the usually noise of kids playing. For some reason the neighbors complained and at some point the courts almost got involved. The parents were charged with something, but the charges were later dropped. To me this is the latest in a string of events that shows that America is going crazy.


In the last few months I have seen reports of students not being given their high school dipolmas because someone in the crowd cheered for them. The parents of the students had been asked to sign a contract not to cheer during the graduation ceremonies, but someone cheered while certain students were walking across the stage so the school waited to give those students their dipolmas. In another recent case high school students will not be allowed to walk during their graduation ceremony because they attempted to perform a school/senior prank that involved ticking alarm clocks. According to the clocks were supposed to disrupt classes at around 9 a.m. on one school morning. Apparently, someone heard the ticking clocks, called the police, and the kids involved in the prank were discovered and will be prevented from walking during graduation. Finally, a few months ago a home owners group tried to evict a couple from their community, which bans children, because they had started taking care of their granddaugther.

All of this seems crazy to me. Why in the world can people and kids not have fun? The seniors at my high school did not pull off a senior prank only because noone could think of a good idea. If someone could have come up with a good idea I probably would have been willing to participate. What in the world are we doing to these kids? Why are we stopping them from having fun? It seems to me that America is becoming less and less of a fun country. I still think America is a great country, but something very bad seems to be happening to this country. What do other think?

[valerief]

1. Yes. The purpose of the courts is for lost trousers. And bailing out the thieves in the WH and

Congress. nt

[MikeNearMcChord]

2. Are we sure that "Idiocracy" is not a movie set 500 years from now,

but happening right now?

[Kerrytravelers]

19. Mr. kt swears we're a heartbeat away from a movie of a farting butt.

I think he's right.

[Tesha]

3. There's no "going" about it; we've been "gone" for a while now. (NT)

[The2ndWheel]

4. It's a mass produced culture with a drive for absolute control of every aspect of life

where more and more seconds of the day, and earlier and earlier in life, are organized and structured around predictability, which is the most productive time, in an economic sense.

[shadowknows69]

5. Cool

It's good that I won't be alone in that.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. There are certain people who use the judicial system to supplement their income.

They use "Neighbor Law" instead of just having a cup of coffee with their neighbors.

Schools are deathly afraid of a taxpayer or a parent of a child suing them at the drop of a hat. These plaintiffs prefer going to court rather than having the kids apologize and endure symbolic penalties like a three-hour detention.

This society in general has become more litiginous than in prior decades. Hypersensitivity about personal rights being violated eventually diminishes valid complaints in the future.

[Nikki Stone1]

7. This may be related to the fact that we don't really know our neighbors

Especially now that we are working ungodly long hours and use our homes as places to sleep in between 12-hour work days and 2-hour commutes. No one has the time or energy to meet the neighbors and it's hard to have empathy for complete strangers, or indulge the yelps of their little kids. Easier to file a lawsuit to keep our quiet environment under control than to spend time we don't have building a decent relationship with the neighbors.

[no_hypocrisy]

8. And don't expect a lawyer to tell you to go home and discuss the matter

with your neighbor and work things out.

[Nikki Stone1]

9. Of course not. Always a buck to be made.

What a danged mess.

[no_hypocrisy]

10. If your library has it, NOLO has a law book for consumers called

Neighbor Law. It will really open your eyes to disengagement with your neighbors. Barking dogs, kids trespassing on your property, leaves from their trees landing on your lawn, not regularly cutting their grass, etc.

It's hard to unite this country if we can't even pair off with our neighbors.

[Nikki Stone1]

12. Oh Lord! In all my time with neighbors,

there's only one I would have wanted to go after, and he was a drug addict who played techno all night. (The police would come, tell him to quiet down, the police would leave, back to the techno. The fact that he was always high seem to have escaped the cops for some reason. Rich white kid, maybe that's why.) Fortunately, he moved out after all the neighbors in the apartment building started calling the cops. (No one was getting any sleep.)

But in general, there usually isn't much you can't settle with most people.

[Solo_in_MD]

11. There are other sides to the story available

Apparently the parents are unwilling to do anything to quiet things down for their neighbors and the description of the shrieks is piercing and constant. Also neighbor to neighbor consultation was tried first.

Kids having fun should not trump everyone else's rights to enjoy their surroundings. Its a balance, and kids need to be taught that balance and the fairness it represents early in life.

[Nikki Stone1]

14. I wonder how that consultation went, with both parties feeling entitled (it seems)

Compromise is an art. It also involves some humility on both sides.

[Solo_in_MD]

15. Clearly unsuccessful

I reared my children to be polite and respect others. No tearing through the grocery store, using their "inside voice" when indoors, respecting the property of other, that kind of thing. I am amazed at those parents who don't. See examples of it all the time at mall, grocery shopping and in the streets.

[Nikki Stone1]

17. But the kids are in their own back yard. You gotta give them some leeway there.

I could see if the parents let their kids yell and scream at the supermarket or some other public place. But they are in a pool in their own back yard. If I had a choice between squealing kids in the daytime and deafening techno music all night, I opt for the kids.

[Solo_in_MD]

18. I tend to agree and there are indeed two sides to it

[Nikki Stone1]

23. I was talking to some folks about this story this morning

And we all seem to be split on this. The one thing no one likes to do is turn it into a lawsuit.

[erpowers]

16. Heard the Recording

I heard the recording on the news this morning. It did not seem out of the ordinary to me. Maybe I would have had to be a neighbor to understand, but I seemed to me like normal kids playing in their back yard.

[Kazak]

13. Going?

:shrug:

[Firespirit]

20. Schools these days

Schools these days are exercising an unbelievable amount of control over what kids do, both in and out of class. In the name of "preventing school violence," guidance counselors and administrators maintain online files of kids, profiling them, tagging those who aren't heavily involved in "school activities" as potential threats, because heaven forbid should a kid be imaginative and creative and have fun in non-shepherded clubs. More and more districts are mandating uniforms, making kids pass through security checkpoints, subjecting them to random searches in the hallways... I've heard of educational bureaucrats tracking kids' websites and blogs that they work on outside of class.

My mother used to teach, and in her last year as a teacher (2005), she got into an argument with other teachers on what student to give a particular award to. The award was supposed to be given to the person with the highest SAT score in the senior class, period, but it turned out that the kid who achieved this was a "punk" type, who had his own band and wrote his own webcomic outside of class, rather than the person that these other teachers had wanted to win -- your standard "involved in everything" kool kid. My mom was basically standing alone in supporting the legitimate winner. Schools these days support conformity and punish those who stand out. All the talk given to teenagers about respecting their individuality, being themselves, etc., is countered by their ACTIONS. Kids can't be kids anymore in school, because they're punished for it.

It's unbelievably creepy. I sincerely hope that the Millennial generation sees through this and doesn't get conditioned to believe that this sort of control is acceptable.

[marzipanni]

21. Your mom sounds like a good teacher

When I was a high school kid in the sixties I cut this advertisement from a magazine (a smaller version of the one that Bob and Joan are posing with in this picture), and hung it in my room.
Any teacher who advocates for the artists and 'oddballs', not just the A students and jocks, was and is o.k. in my book!

[yella_dawg]

22. WE didn't pull immature pranks our senior year.

Three years earlier, a class had turned loose a herd of goats on the roof of the main building of the high school. Any imaginable stunt would look pathetic after that, so why even try?



On the other hand, I've believed the society is insane for at least a decade.

[marions ghost]

24. People are unhappy basically

they're always so quick to nitpick these days, it's true.

Not knowing the details of this story about the pool it's hard to say, though. It's possible the parents of the kids refuse to comply with any reasonable request to tone it down a bit.

I had a situation like this a couple of weeks ago. A neighbor had taken down a very large tree and wanted to cut it up himself. I work outside on a porch a lot in summer and am currently working on a time-sensitive article. Even so, it was still loud when I was inside the house. For five solid days from early morning til late evening the grind of the chain saw went on. He got somebody to help him and they were taking turns so there was no let-up. Finally on Memorial Day weekend we were having some friends over and begged them to stop sawing for awhile. Got a very cold reaction. Really all I would expect in this situation was for them to tell us they were planning some serious noise pollution for several days so we could at least know what to expect and how long it would last. But when we suggested that some notice might have been nice, they appeared not to even understand what we were talking about. And these are people who profess to be "environmentally concerned."

So it's not always black and white on noise complaints. I'm left with the idea that people may not even know what it IS to be good neighbors anymore, or care. We would not have done the same to them.

So I'd have to know more about the particulars to judge. But I do think people are taking out their frustrations about the bigger picture on each other. Lord of the Flies. Or Idiocracy...I don't like it.