Youth

They say wisdom comes with age. That’s what I’ve been telling myself ever since my hair left town without so much as a forwarding address. None of the rodents had any trouble setting up camp when I had hair, or maybe that is why it left.

I'm Harold—Hal to my friends, which is mostly just me and the bartender at Murphy’s. He nods as he cares, but still charges full price.

Now, I don’t want to sound like one of those old men yelling at clouds. I tried that once. Cloud didn’t even apologize. Just drifted off like it had somewhere better to be. Typical.

But I will say this: something is wrong with today’s youth.

I noticed it last Tuesday. Or maybe it was Thursday. Doesn’t matter. Time gets slippery when you’re a retired old fart, and your calendar is just a coaster for your whiskey glass.

I was sitting on a park bench, quietly observing strangers, when I noticed a group of teenagers gathering. In my youth, such gatherings usually signaled a fight, a dance, or that someone had acquired a dubious magazine. But these kids? They were all focused on their phones.

Not talking. Not laughing. Not even fighting, which frankly would’ve been more entertaining.

Just standing there, thumbs twitching like they were trying to text Morse code to aliens.

I took a sip from my flask—doctor says I shouldn’t drink in the morning, but what does he know? He’s younger than my shoes—and I watch them like a nature documentary.

“And here we see the modern adolescent,” I muttered. “Communicating entirely through glowing rectangles. Courtship ritual involves sending tiny pictures of cats.”

One of them laughed suddenly, loud and sharp. The rest looked up for a second, like meerkats sensing danger, then immediately went back to their screens.

No one asked, “What’s funny?”

No one said, “Share it with the group.”

Back in my day, if someone laughed, you demanded to know why. It was practically a constitutional right. You couldn’t just laugh privately. That was suspicious behavior. You might’ve been laughing at us.

And if you were, well, that’s how fights started. Good, honest fights. None of this passive-aggressive “seen” message nonsense.

I shook my head and took another sip.

Now, don’t misunderstand—I’m not opposed to technology. I own a smartphone, after all. It’s more intelligent than I am, which I find quite irritating. I once asked it for directions, and it simply told me to “turn left.” I did, and ended up walking straight into a bush—without any apology from it.

But the problem isn’t the phones. It’s what they’ve done to people.

Take attention spans. I was at Murphy’s the other night—strictly for social reasons, of course—and this young fellow was sitting at the bar. Couldn’t have been older than twenty-five. He ordered a drink, took one sip, and then spent the next ten minutes checking his phone.

Didn’t look at the drink. Didn’t savor it. Didn’t even seem to remember it existed.

Now, when I drink, I commit. I form a relationship with that glass. We have an understanding. It’s there for me, and I’m there for it. That’s loyalty. That’s character.

This kid? He abandoned his whiskey like it was a bad date.

I leaned over and said, “You gonna finish that?”

He looked at me like I’d just spoken Latin. “I’m pacing myself,” he said.

Pacing himself. At twenty-five. I nearly choked. I hate to know how he paces with the ladies, or if he even can.

At twenty-five, I didn’t even know what pacing was. I thought it was something horses did. You drank until either the bottle was empty or you were. That was the system. It wasn’t a good system, mind you, but it was consistent.

And don’t even get me started on their music.

I tried listening to one of those modern songs. My neighbor’s kid recommended it. Said it was a “banger.”

First of all, nothing that requires explanation is a banger.

Secondly, I listened to it and couldn’t determine whether the singer was sad, angry, being gradually strangled by a robot, or overwhelmed by the nagging of several wives.

Back in my day, music had clarity. A man sang about heartbreak; you knew he’d been left. A woman sang about love; you knew she’d found it. There were verses, choruses—structure! You could hum along.

Now it’s all “oohs” and “yeahs” and something that sounds like a fax machine having an emotional crisis with Doctor Phil.

I told the kid, “This isn’t music. This is what my toaster would sound like if it got depressed.”

He didn’t laugh. Just stared at me, then put his headphones back on. Probably texting his friends about the weird old guy.

Which, to be fair, I am.

But here’s the thing: it’s not just the music or the phones or the pacing of whiskey, or how they are with the ladies. It’s the… fragility. Now I don’t mean that as an insult. I mean it as an observation from someone who has fallen down the same three stairs in his house for fifteen years and still hasn’t fixed them.

These kids seem so easily overwhelmed.

I saw a girl in the grocery store the other day. Stood in front of the cereal aisle for a full five minutes, just staring. I thought maybe she’d lost something. I asked, “You alright?”

She said, “There are too many choices.”

Too many choices. For cereal.

Now I’ll admit, there are a lot of cereals. You’ve got your flakes, your puffs, your loops, your suspiciously shaped marshmallows. It’s a whole ecosystem.

But in my day, you picked one and lived with the consequences. Didn’t like it? Congratulations, you now have a personality trait.

“I’m a Raisin Bran man,” you’d say, even if you hated raisins. That was your identity. You stuck with it.

This girl looked like she might cry over granola.

I wanted to tell her, “Life only gets more complicated from here, kid. Wait till you have to choose a healthcare plan.” But I didn’t. Because I’m not heartless. Just mildly bitter and pleasantly buzzed.

Now, before you think I’m entirely against the youth, let me say this: they’re not all bad.

They’re polite, for one thing. Almost too polite. I held the door open for a young man the other day, and he said, “Thank you so much, sir.”

Sir.

I looked behind me to see if my father had somehow come back from the dead. Sir. I’m not a sir. I’m a Hal. I’m a guy who once tried to fix a leaky sink with duct tape and optimism.

But I appreciated it.

They’re also… kinder, in some ways. More aware. They talk about feelings like it’s normal.

We didn’t do that. If you had feelings, you buried them deep inside and let them manifest as mysterious back pain later in life.

These kids will sit down and say, “I’m struggling emotionally.”

At their age, if I said that, my friends would’ve handed me a beer and said, “Try struggling with this.”

Different times.

I suppose every generation thinks the next one has lost its way. My father used to say my generation was doomed because we listened to loud music and wore our hair too long.

I told him he was out of touch.

Now I find myself repeating these words, but with more wrinkles and a deeper appreciation for a good chair and fine whiskey. Perhaps… maybe a beautiful lady wouldn’t even bother with an old fart like me.

Maybe that’s the real problem. Not the youth, but the fact that time keeps moving, and we don’t like being left behind.

I don’t understand their slang or their apps. I still call it “the Fakebook,” which is apparently incorrect. Someone shared that they’re going to the store and will return in a week, and that they'll also share updates on what everyone next door is doing.

But they don’t understand me either.

They don’t know what it’s like to wait for something. To sit by a phone and hope it rings. To write a letter and wonder if it’ll ever get there. They’ve never had to memorize a phone number. I still remember my childhood number. Don’t remember where I put my keys, but that number? I can’t remember why I walked into the kitchen half the time, but that number? Permanently etched into my brain, as it owes me money.

They’ve got the world in their pocket—information, entertainment, connection—all instant.

And yet, they seem…restless.

Maybe that’s why they stare at those screens. Not because they’re shallow or distracted, but because they’re looking for something they haven’t quite found yet.

Same as we were. We just looked for it in different places.

I finished my drink—purely for hydration—and stood up from the bench. My knees protested, as they always do—ungrateful things. Honestly, if my knees had a personality, they’d be retired and bitter.

As I walked past the group of teenagers, one of them glanced up, just for a second.

“Nice hat,” he said.

I touched my cap. Old thing. Had it for years. Survived weather, bad decisions, and at least one ill-advised attempt at dancing.

“Thanks,” I said. “It’s older than you.”

He grinned. “Vintage.”

Vintage. I liked that. I touched my cap. Sounds better than “still wearing it because I refuse to admit defeat.”

I kept walking, a little slower than I used to, but still moving. Forward motion. Even if it comes with sound effects.

Maybe the youth aren’t the problem.

Maybe they’re just… different.

And maybe that’s okay.

Except for the haircuts.

Nevertheless, if I see another one neglecting a perfectly good glass of whiskey, I will organize an intervention.