I have been saying for YEARS that someone invented Velcro shoe fasteners because the kids these days were too fucking stupid to tie their own shoes.
I rest my case.
“I had to teach my friend how to tie his shoes, he either wore velcro or tucked the laces into the shoe up until that point.“
There was an Internet video of a gathering of college Millennials sitting in
a circle watching a Coed take more than 10 minutes to figure out how
to use a common household can opener. The idiots cheered when she
finally opened up up a tin can. If these idiots cannot perform a simple
task like this, I doubt they could cook a meal on their own. When the
shit hits the fan, these morons will starve to death!
This sort of thing has happened to me in the past. By third grade, I
was doing long division the old fashioned way. At age 17 I bought a
TI 4-function calculator. I mostly lent it out to my waitresses to do
their receipts, but I ended up using it to the extent I forgot how to
do many math functions because the device made me lazy.
I lost my cursive skills after taking a drafting class in Jr. Hi. I could
lay down perfect print in a drafting font, but in the end, I had a mix of
print and cursive that even I cannot read.
Once you learn how to read an analog clock or watch, you never lose
the skill but, whole generations have never learned to read a dial clock.
A lot of the skills you lose to laziness or disuse. If you don’t use it,
you can lose it. I keep a Glovers Pocket Reference that has about
40 pages of reference material filled with conversion factors and
a shit-ton of geometry formulas just in case, but I was a lot sharper in
elementary school than I have been my adult life (even without alcohol!)
PS The dizzy college chick would probably use a P-38 can opener
to clean her fingernails. From the Cub Scouts forward, I always
had one hanging on my keychain. A heavy-gauge tuna can could
cramp your fingers before you could get it open!
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Rub the damn top on concrete if you don’t have the P-38 available.
Just remember to stick your knife under the whole works, or your Dinty Moore will be all over the sidewalk.
And don’t even mention a map and compass to these GPS-retards…
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I was reading at a better than 2nd-grade level when I entered
Kindergarten. I have my book whore mother who taught me using
the phonics method to thank for that. Your comment on navigation
stirred a few memories. I once had a really bad Jr. Hi. science
who tried to beat the simple concept of triangulation into my head,
not the advanced mathematics, but the concept. A few years later,
I read a paragraph that explained it.
If you are hiking, all you need is a map, a compass, and 2 landmarks.
My dad bought a tiny 23′ cabin cruiser. We were inside the break-
water in Long Beach. The boat had a radio direction finder and
a map of the area. My dad thought I was a genius when I tuned to
two local radio stations and pinpointed our exact location.
Between dead reconning and the map/compass method, I cannot
get lost. I have read stories about idiots driving their cars into a
lake using GPS technology. Every hike I took involved a compass
and topological map.
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Something else we have in common I see. My Mother also taught me to read in Kindergarden using the phonics method.
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I think you will find men of our generation have had mothers and fathers do teach the young ones how to read before school starts. Of course most moms of our generation were home moms. My mother also taught us to read at a very young age and my dad being an Air Farce ossifer and pilot taught my brother and me land navigation and star navigation using compasses and topo maps and using materials at hand in case you didn’t have a compass, or a map.
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I tried to show some your idiots a few years back how to clutch start a 68 VW Bug the girl owned and had her two boy toys with her. They could not get the concept of pushing it down a slight grade with the key on, in 2nd gear with the clutch depressed and when enough speed, pop the clutch out and MAGIC! it will start. they pulled in to get gas and left the boom box stereo blasting and wore down the battery. I finely gave up and said you are on your own. If ya don’t know how to drive a older bug and get it started then live with your stupidity. The girl said she was gonna call her dad to tow it. Some people’s fucking idiot kids, well family…
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Daddy Fail.
Bet he took care of that after she told him what you were trying to tell her.
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I can beat that. I was on a dead flat surface with 1962 MG Midget.
I put one buddy in my MG and had another push with his car. The
bumpers did not match so climbed on the hood with my feet on
the MG’s bumper and away we went. It never even dawned on
me that I could have broken my legs but I trusted both guys!
Way back in the 70s, I was riding with a buddy up in Lytle Creek
when his car took a shit. The slope was so steep you could hit
60 MPH. After repeated attempts, we said fuck it, put the car
in neutral and coasted down the mountain. By the time we hit
North Fontana, the slope shallowed to the point you could walk
faster than the car. It took some time, but it got us within
walking distance of his parent’s house.
Towtruck? We don’t need no stinking towtruck!
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Do they wear flip flops in the winter?
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All of you commenters are great, I can’t get lost with a topo map and a compass, and the compass is optional if I can get a star fix.
I have an “African Engineering” story as well (many, in fact – I graduated from AE College with a Masters Degree…).
We were GI’s in Minot, North Dakota, cruising around the farmlands looking for old Chevys and Fords to grab before the crusher got ’em. I had my ’57 Chevy, my buddy Randy had his ’69 Plymouth Duster…
Well, my battery had been weak, and getting weaker, but at least my generator was okay – the battery was waaaay past its last legs. So, wouldn’t you know it, I tried starting it up Out In The Middle Of Nowhere and of course I hear the pathetic sound of a starter motor trying to turn over on 6 volts or less… Y’all know the sound.
Anyway, here we are in the wilds of beautiful North Dakota, not even a farmhouse in sight (and you can see 20 miles on a good day!), and me with a ’57 with an almost totally dead battery. No problem, just jump it from Randy’s car. Right? Uh, no cables. Nuttin’, no wires we could use for conductors. Oh crap. All I could find was various and sundry junk in my copious trunk, and Randy had… an old choke cable in his trunk. I have NO idea why he had it, but I was a happy camper when we found it.
We took the two cars, touched bumpers (hard!), and I bridged the two positive terminals on the battery posts on both cars, being VERY careful not to touch the frame. 10 minutes is a looooong time to be doing this, but by golly, the car caught and I didn’t turn it off until I got back to Base and parked it. Got a battery the next day… and a pair of jumper cables (used) as well.
Hey, if it’s stupid and it works, it ain’t stupid. Let’s see a snotflake do anything even CLOSE to that nowadays! (Besides, all the new cars have plastic bumpers…)
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