Teenage waste products

OK, I know I'm painting with a pretty broad brush here, so it'll be easier, not to mention a helluva lot faster, to exclude the good teenagers of today's generation.

Each of us (hopefully) knows at least one. I'm fortunate and know probably a dozen or so. We know these kids and young adults and we know that they are a joy to be around. They make good neighbors, good employees, good students. . . they make for good Americans.

The rest? Pure waste products. And getting worse, not better.

Our generation moans about there not being any Social Security left when we reach retirement age. I tell those people to hell with Social Security and that a reason there won't be any is because the selfish, worthless little shits that pass for the next generation are too damn stupid, lazy and aimless to amount to much of anything unless it involves being a professional video-game geek, text-messenger or night club slut.

Pretty strong, huh?

Just a few days ago, I wrote about deadbeat parents and the damage they cause to the children they write off or disown or otherwise neglect and abuse. I still hold to that.

But today, let's talk about the inverse: Overly Permissive Parents, or OPP's for short.

What is an Overly Permissive Parent? Simple: A parent who lets their kid get away with pretty much anything, then when the brat is caught, hires a lawyer and starts screeching that whatever little Jerk or Jerkette did wasn't their fault.

In between times the brat is getting in trouble, the OPP spoils their kid(s) with cars, stereos, computers, $40,000 cars, $500 phones, spring-break cruises and vacations, designer clothes and for the little girl brats, boob and butt jobs.

Yes, boob jobs--as in, we're gonna make those teenage titties two to three times the size they really need to be. And if the butt isn't poochy enough? No problem. We'll get Dr. Plastic to fix that as well.

Then, sometime in between the iPhones and spring break cruises and after the boob and butt jobs, the next gift from the OPP is either an abortion or nine months worth of pre-natal vitamins, because in this day and age, the little Jerks are knocking up the little Jerkettes at an alarming rate.

In my day, a high school girl who got pregnant was pretty much ostracized. While nobody openly looked down on the girl, nobody damn sure condoned her behavior and decision. Likewise for the jerkwad who knocked her up. A few guys might snicker that he's a real stud, but most of us saw him for the inconsiderate dumbass he was.

Today, the jerkette is hailed as a hero of virtue while at the same time, pitied with crocodile tears from her envious fellow jerkettes for the "situation" she somehow found herself in.

Interesting. These are the same jerks and jerkettes that imbibe in "sexting" and "Girls Gone Wild" parties and homemade porn parties--yet they suddenly become clueless as to how little Jerkette got that ever growing speed bump in her belly that threatens her bellybutton piercing?

Where the F-BOMB are the parents? I'll tell you. Read on. I'm confident you can relate.

High school reunions over the past thirty years prove that the jerkwads change damn little over the course of three decades. But the real problem is that they spawn little Jerkwad, Juniors. Same with the Jerkettes.

Which all would lead up to the age-old excuse of "Well, the kids just have bad parents."

Damn right they do. But they also have opportunities that we didn't have at their age. Between cell phones, the internet, e-mail and the electronic information age, there is zero reason for them to turn out like the little jerks and jerkettes that they are. There are more places to get help, more places to get counseling, more places to get free birth control and more places to find proper role models than ever before in this country's history.

But that's no fun. It's more fun to go to parties and film porno parties in the back bedrooms. It's more fun to go to Walmart and Target and shoplift OTC medications and steal from their psychotic, hypochondriac parents' prescription pill stashes and take all that stuff to their parties where they mix it with alcohol that they are too young to legally purchase or possess. It's more fun to go on vandalism sprees around the neighborhood smashing out windows and spray-painting graffiti on homes and automobiles. It's too fun for the boys to wear droopy looking pants that hang down to their knees, for for the little girls to dress like London crack whores.

And yet, their parents see exactly how they are dressed when they leave the house. When the police catch them at their dope and porno parties, "NOT MY KID!" is the wail of protest from these pillars of parenthood.

And the kids stand there smug, surly and defiant, glaring at the police and anyone else because they know mommy and daddy will bail them out and take care of everything.

These are the jerks and jerkettes of our present society. Their parents are just as bad. Maybe even worse.

You can tell a lot about a family by their kids in the majority of cases. When we were growing up, the saying went, "Like father, like son."

Well, given the preponderance of waste-product teenagers and pre-21 adults today, I think the saying could go, "Like parents, like children."

Translation? Both parents and offspring are waste products.