It makes me wonder when texting students wander out into traffic. Must be a Darwin moment when traffic has to frantically avoid them. Disaster strikes when a driver is texting and not watching the texting students. Both are knuckleheads. They cannot stop texting for even a few minutes.
Some think we need more laws to keep people from being knuckleheads. Not me since a person intent upon being a knucklehead will be a knucklehead regardless of laws. We have plenty of data over the years of people who insisted on being foolish despite good advice.
For the record I try to help text victims who accidentally embrace sign poles. My sympathy is given when all of a sudden they realize their device is broken so they will have to look life in the eyes all day long.
Now I like communication as well as the next person. I chat up lines and enjoy whoever happens to be next to me. And I do text. But there is something I do that labels me a text dweeb: I spell out the words and I spell them correctly.
I occasionally get a text: u r da bom lol. While I recognize the compliment, I am distracted by the lack of real words. Young people today communicate, somewhat, but lack the real communication skills required by most professional organizations. They harm themselves when they get comfortable with text jargon.
Most professional organizations react poorly to: wazzup? The separator for great jobs is the ability to use language well. While there are exceptions, the ability to communicate professionally is essential for most jobs.
A generation or two ago it was not texting that caused these accidents, it was loud music. By loud I mean volume that parts your hair when you get into the car. My generation sang along at the top of our lungs without anyone ever hearing us.
Many in my generation drove right through red lights and into the path of emergency vehicles via the mind-numbing effects of loud music. One friend years ago said he did not hear the collision but realized that there had to have been one since when the music stopped he realized he was upside-down on the highway.
We of the 1960s were also a drug generation and I am sure a number of accidents were due to drivers being high on drugs. Not all of us, though. A few years ago a friend and I were in a meeting where the speaker said, “You from the 1960s and 1970s were big-time drinkers, smokers and drug users.” My friend and I rose at exactly the same moment and protested, “Did not!”
I was a member of the Methodist Student Union and spent my time there where all of those activities were not. Nor were the members of that organization typical of the stereotype college students drinking, etc. But we did graduate and go on to be productive members of the society.
While I have not gone by the Wesley Methodist Student Center to see if texting has taken today’s students over, it is possible. Perhaps in the middle of prayer-time there are a few eyes watching screens and texting back. I suspect not.
The knuckleheads of my generation either survived their knuckleheadedness or they did not. More importantly, some of us were able to learn from watching others of our generation make mistakes. The same is true today with distracted and impaired driving taking the place of my generation’s types of impairment including two headed drivers and other dating phenomenon.
Some of us then knew not to do those really dumb things. I hope the same awareness of dumb things happens to develop today. When I say to college students, “Be careful,” I mean it. Sign poles leave a red mark, but they already know this.
Dr. Michael Swickard hosts the syndicated radio talk show News New Mexico on six to nine a.m. Monday - Friday on a number of New Mexico radio stations and through streaming. Email: michael@swickard.com
