FEATURED JOBS
I’m in my 50s, and if you were to ask people my age to name some top memories of bar or bat mitzvahs of our youth, I can almost guarantee they’d say at least:
1. We gave each other $5 gift certificates to Hecht Co. so often, we might as well have held on to them and just traded them.
2. The luncheons were held usually at places like Bluecrest or Schleider’s.
3. The typical hors d’oeuvres were the cocktail franks in a “blanket.”
4. The “man” of 13-year-old boys was the one who came back to the kids table with a lemon yellow, cherry garnished whiskey sour in hand.
So, what’s changed over the years? Because 13-year-old kids are still trying to talk their way into an alcoholic beverage at these affairs.
Unless, I’m mistaken, and maybe I am, it felt like it ended there.
I never remember my friends raiding their father’s stash of bourbon or gin.
Even through high school and college, of course there was drinking, but I never felt like it was toxicology level drinking.
At a simcha over the weekend, a person at our table talked about how kids don’t seem to be drinking just to be cool, but they’re drinking as if they are trying with all their heart and soul to kill themselves.
There was a party a couple of years ago at a home in the Jewish community where kids became so sick that 911 was called to transport a couple of them to the hospital.
This is just another part of this ongoing discussion. Why on earth are kids in so much pain that they are transcending the levels of even kids being kids.
What do I mean by that? Come on, we all have our stories. My dad caught me smoking one of his cigars in the backyard one night. His punishment? He made me smoke the entire stogie. I threw up my guts, and that was my last cigar since age 11.
My wife wanted to know what the deal was with the TV detective always pouring the brown liquid from the crystal decanter over the glass and ice cubes. Her dad took out the Scotch and poured it over ice. Lisa drank, and that ended her Scotch career. She was 12.
Was masking the pain less back then? I don’t know. But I just don’t remember anyone trying to reach the death level.
Now, it seems like it is more common behavior. It’s not good enough for a college student to drink, he’s got to play beer pong or measure a successful night by how much it took to make him pass out.
I’m sure I’m going to be scolded that nothing has really changed over the years.
But I think it has.
For one, the vocabulary is totally different. Terms like “fruit salad, (a bowl at a party where everyone empties the viles of drugs from their parents’ medicine cabinets)” to “roofies, (the date rape drug)” seems to have added an extra element to the party jargon. And the weed? As experts will tell you, it’s not the same marijuana smoked back in the 60s and 70s, it’s much stronger, much more addicting. Add crystal meth, add ecstacy, and wash it down with liquor. Heroin, I’m told has become the new marijuana of this generation.
And what else is different. We have close friends who have spent tens of thousands of dollars for short and long-term recovery programs for their children. We know people who have pretty much mortgaged every penny out of their homes to save their children. And we also know contemporaries whose children have been found dead from over doses.
So why?
Recently the media has discussed the issue of reducing the drinking age from 21 to 18.
Okay, that’s a good discussion.
But I had a 16-year-old boy tell me this week that even in the aftermath of the death of one of his friends, he’d still rather not be sober than be sober.
Imagine that, and he told me this in front of his friends, he’d rather not be sober than be sober.
So, it’s not about 18 vs. 21.
It’s about living and dying.
My friends and I never wanted to die. And we really wanted to be awake more than asleep.
That’s the problem we’re all facing. We seem to be more asleep than awake when it comes to these teens who are hollering for help.
While we’re hopeful that the social workers are getting into the ways of helping these kids, I still feel education is important.
How do we educate our children to withstand the most lethal drug of them all, peer pressure? Saying no in a party situation is overwhelming. You say no, your “friends” can rip you to shreds. And if you don’t have the strength to handle being called a “wuss” or whatever they throw at you, then your self image becomes tied into how much you drink or smoke.
But there’s another issue as well. Someone’s got to have the guts to point out the people who are supplying the liquor, who is buying for the kids. Someone’s got to point out the dealer in the neighborhood. This takes guts and swimming against the tide as well.
Who’s going to do it?
Your friends are buying beer for their kid? Is it going to be you?
I heard of an area family having a party in honor of one of its child’s sports teams’ championship. The “parents” allegedly supplied the party with kegs. But the parents were home, it was “okay.”
Okay?
It’s hardly okay.
Who’s going to notify the police? Who’s going to step forward and offer their kids a place to talk it out instead of drink it down?
Maybe it starts at home. In the living room or den or kitchen. No fanfare. No announcements.
Just talk, and then action.
Your kid can role his eyes when you say you “dig where he’s at.”
But it sure beats “digging where he’s at…..when “at” is the cemetery.
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