Voices: Veruca's Fault?
I've had Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on the brain since seeing the preview this weekend (prior to a movie I won't admit in print to having seen).
It will be weeks before critics decide if Tim Burton's remake has improved on the original, but the film's gluttonous storyline is surely more appropriate than ever.
An Associated Press story published in papers across the country this week defined American's twenty-somethings as the "entitlement generation." While I was at first tempted to agree, I've since decided that the kids are just a scapegoat - one symptom among many of a greater social illness.
If Veruca Salt's temper tantrums hadn't been entertained time and time again, would she still demand instant satisfaction of her every desire?
Of course not. Not unless she saw her parents acting that way. It's like the classic anti-drug commercial tried to tell us it would be. They learned if from watching you, OK.
The 21st Century is the age of medical malpractice lawsuits, prescription pills to cure every real and imagined ill, and people becoming famous for no good reason whatsoever.
ABC's latest reality smash hit Dancing with the Stars was teased with scandal last week when a telephone answering service complained it received votes for Seinfeld's J. Peterman (a.k.a. John O'Hurley). No one's been able to prove that ABC printed the wrong number, so it's understood that a whole bunch of excited viewers must have made the same dialing error. Accidents happen, right? Not according to Klein's Mount Pleasant Answering Service. The company's owner continues to complain, either actually expecting to be reimbursed for the $500 it lost because of the calls or just trying to maximize the free publicity.
Sometimes bad things happen. And sometimes they even happen to good people. And - I know this is shocking, but - sometimes there isn't anyone to blame. Suck it up and deal.Like parents used to say generations ago, "Nobody likes a crybaby."
If today's twenty-somethings believe getting something for nothing really is possible it's only because their elders forgot to include a course in reality among their lesson plans. Scranton has been plagued by an epic battle between pseudo-populists who insist free swimming is an inalienable right and those who say a small fee will instill swimmers with a sense of respect and responsibility. I won't pretend I don't have an opinion on the issue. I've decided to teach my kids that nothing is free and if they aren't willing to work, save and sacrfice to get it, they must not really want it that bad.
What? You have to study to get an "A?" Come on, since when?
Wanna lose weight and shape up? There's only one way to do it. No matter how many miracle fad diets and pills and machines they put on the market, there will always only be one real solution. And it's the same thing physicians have been telling us for decades - eat right and exercise. Yeah, it's hard work and it requires disicipline. How bad do you want it?
Last I checked, it wasn't the twenty-somethings among us supporting the $40 billion dollar a year diet industry.
My kids have already learned that if they buy it at the dollar store, it's probably going to break. They'd rather own a couple of quality items than a shopping cart full illusions.
In a world where wealth and status symbols have become more desirable than accomplishment and experience, we need to start choosing our priorities and battles a little more carefully. Is free swimming really the most crucial issue facing Scranton right now?
The reason people are making fun of Paula Abdul's manicure crusade is not because her sudden passion for sterile nail salons is the only one she's ever shared with us. It's because the severity of infection she claimed to get is so rare there's hardly a problem.
I want to have my cake and eat it too, daddy!
Who told Paula vanity was risk-free?
-- alicia grega-pikul, 30 June 2005
Send email to: apikul@timesshamrock.com.
