As I sit here watching the #yyc feed on Twitter about the hostage taking in a SW Calgary Junior High it makes me wonder "What is the world coming to?". I know the world isn't a perfect place but it is becoming a more violent and dangerous place everyday.
Times like this make me look back at how things were back in the day, when I was in Junior High. We didn't have knives, guns, or weapons of any kind. We weren't perfect either, I can remember the buzz around school when there was going to be a fight. Half the school would show up in the field behind the school. Most fights were between boys, but there were the odd girl fights too.
I have never been a fan of violence, but I never saw anyone get severely hurt in any of these fights, nor did I ever see someone get killed. I never saw anyone ganging up on anyone, people just stood by and let the 2 fighters sort out their differences. Most fights never lasted more than 5 minutes. A few punches thrown and connected and it was over.
Now a days, kids are carrying knives, rifles, hand guns and even automatic machine guns. I feared for my daughter growing up, I always warned her to not look certain types in the eyes, fearing that they may kill her for just looking at them the wrong way. And even now I tell her to keep her keys between her fingers and be prepared to stab someone in the eyes if they jump her. She has never been jumped but her boyfriend has, so I always knew it was possible, but for her it hit home when he was jumped.
I live in a fairly safe neighbourhood in Calgary but have had two incidents where police have been at my door asking if we had seen any activity due to severe attacks. Once was for a carjacking and the person was beaten nearly to death. The other time was someone had been jumped and severely beaten. This is happening in my back yard.
What happened to the days where you let your kids play outside until the street lights came on? Playing hide and seek or knock on ginger were the time killers we used. The days when you could walk to the 24 hour convenience store at any time of night? Honestly, I blame it on TV, video games and absentee parents.
Growing up I remember spending most of my time outside, not in front of a TV. Saturday morning was TV time. Video games were the likes of pong. Although, latch key kids became well known in my generation, my parents were still very involved in what I was doing with my time.
Kids today are watching movies that depict horrible violence. Rating these movies doesn't stop these kids from watching them. With the invention of the internet, kids are viewing things that would probably shock the most violent person and they never have to step into a movie theatre. TV isn't any better. But video games are the worse to blame...games like GTA where you are completing levels by killing people on the streets. These games are for adults...but kids are playing them too..where are the parents, is my question.
So as I sit here questioning what is happening with world I slowly realize that it is the core family values that is missing from the lives of people/children today. Children need constant guidance and the only one to blame for lack of guidance is the parent. As soon as we return to our core family values we may be lucky enough to see a swift change in how we are treating each other in the world today.
Miss Candy
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