Childhood Sucks

Whatever I was trying to say here, I don't think I said it very well.



Who'd be a child these days? In Manchester today a school bus was fired on. Children are missing out on free meals because they don't want their friends to tease them for being poor (that at least is a familiar complaint; I'm sure you spent many happy hours at school tormenting others in the hope that you'd fit in and no-one would tease you). And I hardly need mention Israel, where babies and young teenagers are considered fair game in an increasingly sordid little conflict.

Are things really that bad nowadays? Has everything changed since I was younger, or has it always been like this and I'm just more aware of it these days? It's summer soon, and if it follows the pattern of all previous summers we can look forward to child abduction, rape, and murder being the lead news story most nights of the week. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but aren't you getting sick of the routine that we go through every time? It starts with a disappearance, a few suitably cute yet heart rending photo's are shown on a daily basis and we are given the spectacle of the parents appearing on the TV to appeal for their child’s safe return. And actually, whilst I'm on that subject, have you started to watch those press conferences with a more cynical eye? Ever since that spate of parents who turned out to be the murderer (Sion Jenkins the headmaster from hell who mashed his stepdaughter's head with a tent spike springs to mind) I find myself watching for the slightest twitch that may indicate guilt.

Anyway, the press conference finishes and the searches continue. We now watch a mixture of policeman and concerned locals trawling across fields and wasteland desperately searching for a clue. The days pass, hope fades, and usually after about a fortnight a ravaged and crumpled body is found, the murder hunt begins, and we forget about it until the trial of whomever was responsible.

And we just accept this, we fucking accept it! Does anyone watch the scenes described above and empathise with the family, hoping that they will see their child again and have the opportunity to hug them and tell them how much they love them? Like hell we do, we see the first report of the disappearance and think; "Poor bugger'll be dead by now, if they're lucky". On the rare occasions that a child is found alive, no one rejoices that the ordeal is over for those concerned. Yet when a body is found, we lap up the news with a kind of grim satisfaction that we were right all along. The next surge of emotion we experience is the fear and loathing felt toward the murderer. And then we get on with our day.

Doesn't any of this suggest that perhaps we have a problem in society? No one wants the above scene to be replayed with his or her children in the starring role, but have you ever thought about how you react to it when it's yet another item on the news? I hesitate to use the hackneyed phrase "betraying our children", but our almost total lack of concern is just that. You disagree that we are that callous? Okay, remember the fever pitched hysteria that snaked it's way across the land last year about the release of paedophiles from prisons? Was that really because everyone was genuinely concerned for the children of their area? Or was it a collective outpouring of guilt a la the hysteria surrounding Princess Di's demise? I think the fact that many of the people who bore the brunt of the group hatred had nothing whatsoever to do with child molesters (oh, my mistake; a Welsh paediatrician was driven out of her home. Truly a fine example of the intelligence of the mob...)

Maybe we're so comfortable with betraying our children because we seem so singularly good at betraying our childhood. Look at where you are today and where your life is heading. Got that image fixed firmly in your head? Good, now does it bear any relation to the sort of person you wanted to be when you were a child? Not the whole "I want to be an astronaut" business, but how you wanted to treat other people and how you wanted to be treated yourself. When we were younger our friends and our family were our whole lives; we knew the sort of person who we enjoyed spending time with, and what sort of person we didn't. It's impossible of course to get anything like that level of clarity now, distractions such as bills, jobs, money and the like cloud the judgement of everybody. What I think I'm lamenting is the loss of vitality and honesty as we age. Does anybody seize the day any more; do you set a goal and strive for it feeling the rush euphoria when you succeed or the agony of disappointment when you fail? Or do we just drift along waiting for the next thing to come along whilst kidding ourselves that we're in control of our lives and destiny? Speaking personally, I'm nothing like the person I hoped to be when younger, partly because of circumstance but mainly because I just didn't try. It was easier not to think about things and let myself become a victim of that circumstance, and I refuse to believe that I'm the only person who regrets this. Modern life may be rubbish, but it's because we let it be that way. Maybe we should either make more of an effort or just give up, but either recourse is better than the casual way we waste our lives.