Generation (me)Pod

“It’s a generation that’s lacking in decency and honor.” That’s the ubiquitous complaint, the archetypal brand, the rite of passage for authenticity. It’s what every generation must be dubbed by its predecessors before it can be found legitimate and reckon-worthy. All ingenuous generations eventually earn their stripes, and after their day in the sun, every indecent and dishonorable generation must eventually grow up and pass the torch of disrepute to the next.

I’ve been joking around for the past few years that I’m getting old. I could afford to do this because I knew that it wasn’t really true. It’s when I start denying that I’m old, that’s when I’ll know I’m in trouble. Now, I’m not ready to start denying anything yet, but I’m finding recently that my claims of being an old man are less jocular and more credulous. And it’s not because my knees hurt when walking up stairs (although they do); and it’s not because I’m more ornery than I used to be (although I am); it’s not even because I think old crap is cooler than new crap (although it is). It’s because I’ve started to notice a significant chasm between my generation and the one I teach. It’s because I can sense my generation passing the torch. And now I find myself saying the same things I rolled my eyes to just ten years ago: “Teenagers today really are lacking in decency and honor.”

The line between right and wrong, which was well-defined and deeply rooted when I was growing up, is now blurry and shallow. Whereas my friends and I stood on the solid foundation of the absolute, kids today are floundering in an ocean of gray relativism. They don’t even realize when they’ve done wrong. It’s not that we didn’t mess up from time to time, but when we did, we were riddled with guilt and misgiving. Today there seems to be no remorse, no contrition, no penitence. No mea culpa.

I wish I could say that this simple desultory philippic was unprovoked, that it was merely the result of my objective observations. But it’s not. Unfortunately, it’s the result of a tremendous betrayal I suffered this week—a betrayal akin to Judas’ kiss or Ollie North’s weapons. My iPod was stolen. And it’s not just that it was stolen; things get stolen all the time. It’s that it was stolen by someone that I trust, someone that I love and care about, someone that I have worked my ass off for. It’s bothersome, and not just on a substantive level, but on a philosophical one. I don’t care about the iPod; it’s an iPod. A complex configuration of plastics, metals, and nano-technology. I don’t even care about the 5,000+ songs it contained; I can recover most, if not all, of them. I care that it was taken by one of my students and that all I have striven to teach over the past six and a half months seems to have been for naught. The irony is that if this student had come to me and asked if he or she could have my iPod, I would likely have given it to him or her, plus the shirt off my back.

In a futile attempt to recover my stolen iPod, I’ve posted fliers in my room and in the hallway, and I’ve been uselessly informing my classes and hopelessly beseeching them to keep their eyes and ears open and to report to me if they see or hear anything. Knowing that this new generation of miscreants is motivated only by personal gain, I’ve even offered a thirty-dollar reward for any information leading to its recovery.

As of yet, I still have my thirty dollars. But a very curious thing has happened: my students have expressed genuine concern for my plight. They seem more disheartened than me. Several have formed investigative search and seizure squads, tracking leads and interrogating potential criminals. Others have mentioned their intention to start up a collection to purchase me a new iPod. All of them seem to be disgusted by this obvious atrocity. And somehow, none of this computes in my old brain. In the course of a day, I went from refusing to believe in the immorality of this younger generation, to wholeheartedly believing it, to unbelieving it. It’s your basic paradigm reshift.

What I’ve failed to notice while carrying out my torch-passing duties, and what all previous generations have failed to notice, is that there is still a lot of remarkable good left over from my generation. (I hope the sarcasm of that statement is obvious.) Now, I’m not saying that there’s not something terribly wrong with the zeitgeist of our nation, or even of our world. I think there is. Why else would we have college campus rampages, planes flown into innocent buildings, and garbage dumpster babies? I think we can all agree that there is something terribly wrong. But it’s nothing new. The world has always been depraved. We simply see so many examples of the depravity today because there are so many more of us than ever before and there are so many more ways to spread the news of these depravations.

But the world has also been terribly good. Day to day, I see far more good than I do evil. It’s just that I like to obsess over the evil and ignore the good. I had left my iPod in the same place, out in the open, for the entire year. I made it no secret that it was there and most of my students knew that it was there. I never thought it worth mentioning all those days that it was left unstolen. But according to the assessment made of this latest generation, that it is lacking in decency and honor, I should be far more amazed that my iPod survived even one day, let alone half a year. Now, I don’t want to buck the system, so I’ll continue muttering my disapproval of subsequent generations, no doubt becoming more and more vocal with each one, until my own dies out. But shame on me if I ever begin thinking that my generation was anything less than indecent and dishonorable.