In the left pocket of all my dress shirts, I carry an Amazing Spider-Man spiral note-pad. Ever the student of Stan Lee and just like Peter Parker, I try to always be prepared for when my ‘Spidey? senses start to tingle.
No, that does not mean I have indigestion. And, I do not don tight, superhero spandex outfits and fight crime. When my ‘Spidey? sense starts to tingle, it usually means I have an idea, and if I have an idea I gotta? jot it down quick or it will disappear into nothingness. If that means taking my eyes off the road as I am driving when the idea hits, so be it. (As far as I know writing in note-pads, unlike texting, is still legal while operating a moving vehicle.) I have trained myself scribble notes — pronto-like — regardless of the time or location.
Okay, I’m getting old and that steel-trap of a mind I used to have is fast rusting. I write stuff down so I don’t forget.
Unfortunately, I then usually forget that I wrote something down, only to discover it later. Case in point: this weekend I started to flip through said note-pad and was able to decipher the following message from the hieroglyphics that is my chicken scratch (No Rosetta Stone was needed):
‘All adults = role model
Cabrera
Sheen
Society
No responsibility.?
The message obviously wasn’t ancient and not Egyptian. It was for me to write a column about two weeks ago — but, as previously stated, I forgot.
I think what I was thinking is something along these lines — today we always hear celebrities gone wild state, ‘I am not a role model, that’s what parents are for.?
And from that, I reckon I was gonna? extrapolate something pithy, timely and most relevant by using Detroit Tiger first baseman Miguel Cabrera’s recent alcohol-induced and actor Charlie Sheen’s cocaine-induced problems as the crutch of society’s ills.
I think.
I seem to recall listening to 97.1 on my FM dial, whilst en route to home one evening. 97.1 is a Detroit-based sports-talk radio station. And, a number of callers who called said things like, ‘Miggy’s just here to hit home runs. What he does off the field is his business.?
And, then folks were laughing at the bizarro comments of Sheen after his TV show (Two and A Half Men) was put on hiatus because of the actor’s offstage antics.
So, I recollect thinking that all of that verbiage, in my humble estimation, was poppycock (balderdash for those of you with sensitive sensibilities). It is my contention (based on the cryptic notes I discovered in my pocket Amazing Spider-Man spiral note-pad), that our society is crapping out, because we have bought into celebrities saying only parents are role models. Nobody wants to take responsibility for well, anything.
In our eagerness to appease everything and everybody we have limited individuals? roles in society. There was a time when all adults were role models simply because they survived youth and were older than the young cubs. Role models were parents, teachers, policemen, even old coots in the neighborhood were to be looked up to.
Remember being taught this, ‘Respect your elders? or reading this, ‘Honor thy father and mother??
It has been going on for years and now we have a generation of adults who act as if they are the center of the universe (a phase most kids used to grow out of by the time they graduated from high school). As society narrowed down the pool of who should be a role model to just a child’s parents, it opened up tidal wave of moronic and destructive personal behavior.
(‘Your Honor, I give you The Peoples? evidence, Exhibits A and B, Cabrera and Sheen, and we rest our case.?)
Adults do not have, nor do they want, to be responsible to anyone other than their own flesh and blood and how a family raises its own is their business and nobody elses? — in other words, anything goes.
Anyway, I think that is what I was gonna write.