How things have changed

When I accepted the instructor job at McCook Community College in 1995, we had to deal with several things as a family. My wife was hesitant to move again since our boys were juniors and freshmen in high school, plus she had never been to Nebraska and didn’t want to feel isolated the way she had when I was Assistant Professor at Northwestern Oklahoma State University.

So I started my new life alone, leaving family in Arkansas while I began my new job in Nebraska. It was January of 1995. I knew our children wanted the family to be together and in March our 9th grader Will did something I thought was truly remarkable. He volunteered to come back to McCook with me after Spring Break and go to school here for the rest of the semester to see if he liked it. Will was active in football, basketball and track in Arkansas and had lot of friends so for him to make that kind of sacrifice in order to try and keep the family together touched me deeply.

So when I came back from Spring Break, Will and his stuff came with me. We didn’t get off to a very good start because they were having a snowstorm in southern Nebraska and we drove into it. Will had had a mishap a few years earlier in the snow in Northwestern Oklahoma when his gloves had come off as he was tubing down a hill and he almost suffered frostbite on one of his hands. He hadn’t liked snow since and it obviously snows a lot more in Nebraska than Arkansas but he persevered.

When I took him to the Junior High the next morning to get him enrolled, another really interesting thing happened that I didn’t anticipate. We taught all of our boys manners literally from the crib plus respect for their elders so when Will started meeting people associated with the Junior High School, he always replied with yes sir and no sir or yes mam and no mam and I heard more positive comments about him from those verbal exchanges than I did about any of the things he excelled in while going to junior high in Arkansas. In fact the principal, Dennis Berry, and I became lasting friends during that time and I’m not so sure that Will didn’t have a lot to do with that happening.

It’s a different world we live in today. Elders don’t get the same respect from young people the way they did a few years ago but neither does anyone else. Young people don’t appear to respect each other the same way they used to. A lot of this is because of technology and social media of course. If you have you head stuck in a smart phone most of your waking minutes, it’s very hard to have meaningful relationships with others at the same time. And this seems to be where a young person’s social identity is defined today and it’s typically because of what they say and not what they do.

Will we ever get back to the days when people were greeted one on one with a firm handshake and a direct look in the eyes with the intention of developing a lasting friendship with that person or will meeting people continue to be a distraction from other more important things that make up a young person’s life today?

I suppose we will see!

As it turned out, the separation from family, friends, and family were too much for Will and after giving it the old college try in McCook, he returned to Arkansas when school was out in May and Linda and I ended up divorcing a couple of years later. But our family remains strong and together to this day even though we’re divorced because of the bonds we made early and the lessons we taught our boys and if we could do it, I know a lot of other families that could too!