Rant #2,438: Laugh

We are in the throes of June, and moving right into July later this week.

Doesn't it already feel like we are in the dog days of summer, even though summer officially began just a few days ago?

Of course, that has to do with the presence of the coronavirus, which has put a major damper on summer for all of us.

It has to do with all the protesting and all the marches or lynch mobs or whatever you want to call them.

It has to do with major corporations and people looking back on their pasts and apologizing for things--and not anything illegal--that were done years and years ago, as if they were carrying this guilt from the moment they did it until now.

And in large part it has to do with the media, which is stumbling over itself in trying to bring what they believe is a balanced picture to the proceedings, but who are, in fact, the most biased organization in our country.

And it also has to do with lack of fun that we have now, coronavirus or no coronavirus. We have simply forgotten how to laugh at ourselves, to laugh at the condition of the human condition, and to laugh at all of our foibles.

This can definitely and unequivocally be linked to the Internet, to handling our social matters via social networks through our computers and other devices.

I was just talking about this with my wife the other day, and the conversation bears worth repeating.

Our generation of kids--born in the late 1950s--learned how to interact with others face to face as had previous generations, whether it be in school, on the ballfield, or in our churches and synagogues.

I remember many a summer night when I was in the park with my friends, and we used to have what we called "rank-out parties," where we would playfully knock each other for whatever reason, whether it be for our lack of prowess on the ballfield, something stupid that we had said, or even for out last name or our nickname.

Sure it could get nasty, but to be honest with you, it was all in fun. When we were done and went upstairs to our apartments--which we called "houses," even though we lived in an apartment complex, Rochdale Village in Queens, which at one time was the largest cooperative housing development in the world--we had had a lot of fun, expended a lot of energy, and needed to rest up for the next day.

You simply cannot do this on the Internet.

Even with emojis that have been created to signify every feeling, including a wink of an eye meaning that we are kidding in what we said, you cannot get the proper nuances of the language and how it is being used.

So everything is taken literally, and that has led to entire generations of kids--pretty much with those who were born starting in the late 1980s--who have no idea how to interact with others, to socialize and to react to remarks that on the surface, might appear to be negative, but in their actual meaning, really aren't.

That is particularly wheat is fueling the marches for racial justice that are going on around the country right now, as it is the very first time that the generation of kids born in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s have had any real, one on one social interaction with their peers.

I spoke to one such person a little while ago, a young man who was born in the late 1990s and is now in his early 20s.

He told me that yes, he believed that there were issues that needed to be addressed, and the marches were addressing them, but on the other hand, yes, these marches were often as much social as they were political.

With the coronavirus putting a stranglehold on everything that young kids normally do during the hot summer--go to the beach, work in part-time jobs, simply living out their young lives--the marches served as sort of a modern YMCA or playground, and one just has to be in it to feel a part of their generation.

Of course, there are many other things involved with these marches. This includes the safety factor, which we are now finding out is not only impacting older people who come in contact with marchers, but even the participants themselves, young people that are getting the coronavirus in record numbers because of the lack of social distancing at these rallies.

But taken without the safety factor, these rallies are perhaps the very first time that this generation has had the opportunity to physically, one-on-one, in person, interact with their peers without doing it through the Internet.

And with little else to do this summer because of restrictions placed on all of us due to the coronavirus, "let's go to the march" has replaced similar summer rallying cries of "let's go to the beach" and "let's go to the movies" of yore.

It is simply a byproduct of all that is going on, and however disturbing it is, we are going to have to put up with these mobs for the foreseeable future, if for nothing else that these kids have absolutely nothing else to do as kids in previous summers had to do.

When you look at it this way, it makes these massive mobs almost understandable, but no less virulent, because the direction of these mobs is anti-social and racist and often violent to a point, whether the participants want to acknowledge that or not.

Yes, we have completely forgotten how to laugh at ourselves, and we have created a generation that has no clue about what ribbing is, has no patience for any behavior that took place even if it was eons ago, and is so serious about what they believe in that they are not only prime candidates for coronavirus infection but seemingly for high blood pressure and heart attacks later on in life.

Boy, was I glad I was born when I was, when life was seemingly simpler--it really wasn't--and I did not have to worry about offending anyone if I called my parents' bedroom the "master" bedroom or if I waved the American flag with glee and a sense of purpose.

These younger people don't know what they are missing ... and that is simply because they simply don't know, or have a clue, about how life is to be lived.

We only have a few years here on earth. Live it to the fullest--and laugh ... it is good for the soul.