Rant #3,143: That Was Then, This Is Now

It’s June!

When I was a kid, the coming of June meant that school was almost over, and that the summer and day camp were in my future.

And my friend’s birthday was at the end of the month, so there was always some type of celebration to look forward to.

Being a kid in the mid to late 1960s was fun, and the summer brought more chances of fun to all of us kids way back when.

Today, as an older adult, the coming of June still brings the anticipation of fun, but it also brings worries to me that I could not have imagined when I was nine or 10 years old.

I worry about my wife, who continues to mend from her head injury.

I worry about my mother, whose dementia isn’t getting any better.

And I worry about this debt ceiling nonsense, which somehow passed the House yesterday as it moves on the hopeful full passage by the entire Congress and signing by the President.

As I said yesterday, myself and millions of other Americans have their hopes—and their money—tied into passage of this compromise bill, yet 117 legislators in the House yesterday voted against passage of the bill, mainly because acting like babies in cribs, since they didn’t get everything to satisfy their own personal agendas, they had tantrums and forgot about their constituents entirely.

WAAAA! WAAAA! I want it all, and if I don’t get what I want, damn my constituents who voted me in, I won’t vote for passage of this bill.

WAAAA! WAAAA!

And when you have legislators like George Santos voting against the bill, you just know that the bill is the right bill for right now.

Now it moves on, and hopefully it continues to pass muster all the way to the President’s desk, meaning that myself and millions of other Americans won’t have to worry about our Social Security and the overall state of our money.

When I was nine or 10 years old, who thought of such things?

About the only money worries I had was how I was going to spend my weekly allowance of 25 cents—on two comic books or on five packs of baseball cards or on ice cream from the Good Humor truck.

Those days are long gone … I pretty much sold my comic book and baseball card collections—I wish I would have kept them, as they would probably make my personal wealth even greater today—and ice cream is just something I buy in the supermarket every now and again.

And back then, even though I wasn’t too politically oriented, I guess from studying government in school at that age, I kind of figured that everyone my parents voted for was decent and honest and would serve their roles proudly.

But all these years later, we know for sure that that simply isn’t true, and we have garbage like George Santos to prove that belief, even if we have any doubts about it.

When I was nine or 10 years old, I went to P.S. 30, a pretty much brand new public grammar school in a brand new housing development, Rochdale Village in South Jamaica, Queens, New York.

To further demonstrate how much things have changed from then to now, P.S. 30 no longer exists as a public grammar school.

It is an annex school,, which means that the New York City Public Schools use it for kids with special needs—kids who cannot handle a public school setting and the public school setting can’t handle them--so it is not a public school anymore.

I just remember when June came, and particularly the end of the month, you would see ripped up notebook paper flying all over the outside environs near the school, as kids tore up their notebooks as if their era of learning was over and done with.

As an adult, I know that that “era of learning” continues to this day, and you never stop learning about things, how things run, how things work, and why things work the way that they do.

But as a kid of nine of 10 years old, who thinks of such things?

School is just about over, your mom has bought you new summer clothes and bathing suits, and you are really ready to go into the pool or the ocean.

But today, our oceans appear to be infested with sharks, and the increased reports of shark attacks kind of takes the pleasure out of going into the real water, the ocean.

Who thought of such things when you were younger?

We had the occasional jellyfish and tar pollution scares, but having to deal with sharks?

Such things never entered my mind back then, and I kind of wish they wouldn’t enter my mind now.