Kids today don’t know what it was like.
Back when I was growing up, we didn’t have safety helmets and knee pads; we’d ride our bicycles down to the quarry and come back home with skinned knees. If we weren’t on our bikes, we were bouncing around in the backseat of the old station wagon, not a seatbelt in sight, but we were fine. When we got home, all us kids would wrestle and play in the backyard, and when we got thirsty, we’d drink from the hose.
We didn’t have any fancy video games or computers; we had Matchbox cars and a patch of dirt. We’d play out back until it got dark; sometimes we’d almost forget to come home to dinner or get a drink from the hose!
And when it was dinnertime, we didn’t sit there playing on our phones. We would sit quietly and listen to dad talk about his day and answer his questions when asked. If we had to get up from the table, we would say, “Excuse me, may I go outside and drink from the hose?” and dad would say yes. That was called “manners,” something in short supply these days.
And the music! It required real talent, not like these modern filthmongers who call themselves musicians. I still remember sitting on the porch with my little 45 record player listening to records by Pat Boone and Jan & Dean, a GI Joe in one hand and the hose in the other, just rocking out and drinking that precious hose water.
Oh, it was a different time, all right. We didn’t have all this division. People didn’t argue about stuff like politics and religion and identity. We argued about which hoses were best to drink from, or whose turn it was to drink from the hose. Sometimes we’d get in fistfights, but we’d always patch things up by passing around that wonderful old hose.
These kids don’t know what they’re missing. Can you believe that back when I was a kid, you didn’t go to the doctor, the doctor came to YOU? I still remember when I was sick in bed and the doctor made a house call. He sat down next to me with his little head mirror and his black bag, and I’ll never forget what he said: “Son, this is the third time you’ve contracted Legionnaires’ disease just this year, and you appear to be in the early stages of lead poisoning. You have to stop drinking from the hose.”
Of course, I didn’t get where I am today by listening to doctors!
These young people today don’t know the meaning of the word sacrifice. I was drafted to fight in Vietnam and stop the spread of Communism, something these young people actually LIKE! It was lonely out there, nothing to keep me company except a locket containing a photo of a hose. I would lay out under the stars, pining for that old hose, and think up words that rhyme with hose, like rose or clothes. Sometimes I’d stare up at the big dipper and just imagine it was filled with sweet, sweet hose water.
Of course, I didn’t see combat; I never made it out of basic training due to my various health conditions. But I imagine it was pretty bad. Charlie probably didn’t even have spigots, much less hoses. Kids today will never understand that. Under Communism, no one gets a hose.
Of course, the young folks today think that I’M the one who’s wrong. My nephew called me on the phone the other day and told me he was worried about me. He said I needed to “get psychiatric help” because I had an “unhealthy obsession” surrounding hoses. He said that it’s “unnatural” to refer to your garden hose as your wife, and then he yelled at me because he “could hear slurping noises in the background.” He said that I needed to “find the root cause of my fixation” and “develop a personality that isn’t solely based around drinking water from the hose.”
Kids today want to send you to a shrink at the drop of a hat, everything’s a big old trauma for them. I didn’t need therapy when I was four years old and watched that drifter beat my grandpa to death with a garden hose, and I sure don’t need it now!
