TALK ABOUT BRUTAL HONESTY.
By Anthony Noel Guest Commentary
“Hello?” “Hi,” I said. “George?” “Um... no, he’s not here.” “O.K. Can I leave him a message?” “Uh... (uncomfortably long pause) you could, but I wouldn’t remember to give it to him.”
There’s a conversation that keeps coming up between me and my friends. It’s the kind of discussion which, when your kids are young, you never imagine having — because you’re just too cool ever to talk “like that.”
Well, my 40-pushing 50-something friends and I are talking like that a lot these days — despite the intactness of our irrefutable, scale-tipping cooliosity. What we’re wondering is, “How did our kids wind up with their seemingly bottomless sense of entitlement?”
That phone conversation actually happened. Since it was the offspring of a customer of mine, I wasn’t in a position where I could say, “Well, remember you will, buster — ever hear of a pen? And assuming you have, do you know how to use one?” So instead, my initial reaction (heard only inside my head) was, “Damn. Why didn’t I have the cajones to say that when I was a kid?”
Of course, the answer is because, if such a brutally honest answer ever found its way back to my parents, I’d have shortly been sans cajones. And even then I felt pretty certain that, despite some amazing advances in the field, prosthetics in that area just wouldn’t cut it.
Now you may be wondering what that phone conversation has to do with entitlement. It’s simple, really. That kid felt entitled to do whatever it was he was doing when the phone rang, without the interruption taking a message would have required.
“You could call back and leave a message on the voice mail,” the kid’s cajones offered.
“Right. Don’t pick up the phone when it rings this time,” is all I could manage.
When we’re debating the rise of adolescent entitlement, my peers and I have some ideas about its origins.
“They were rewarded for everything in grade school,” one of us says. “Even doing nothing. Somebody decided it wasn’t ‘fair’ to recognize excellence and not ‘other gifts,’ so every kid got a ribbon or a certificate for something, no matter how cooked up it clearly was.”
Nods of agreement.One of us goes further: “It’s the boomers. They drive around, like the song says, with their Deadhead stickers on their Cadillacs — or maybe their Hummers now. The same generation that gave us Earth Day is feeling entitled to use half the world’s oil supply for a run to Stop ‘n Shop. Why wouldn’t their kids feel entitled?”
A college instructor with no children — and hundreds at the same time — offers her perspective.
“I had a grad student last semester who fell short of a B in my class by three points. She knew she was on the bubble all semester, yet never once took the initiative to do an extra credit project. She knew I awarded points for attendance, but missed three class meetings.
“After the semester ended,” she continues, “she e-mailed me for her grade and I broke the news. She earned a ‘C’, and that’s what she’s getting. Which means she’s also getting booted out of the program because it’s her third ‘C’ overall. She e-mailed me several more times begging for the ‘B’!” Through all of her actions, choices she made, she earned a solid C.”
“Yeah,” one of her colleagues piles on. “She got what she earned. Not what she wanted, wished for, dreamed about — or felt entitled to.” (Let me just remind you here of my prior warning about how lame we all sound. Good thing we’re too cool to care!) And that’s where our conversation inevitably winds up: Today’s kids feel entitled because being entitled is waaaaay easier than doing the work necessary to get the things they want.
But cajones — those, they’ve already got.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 27, 2007. Read the original PDF.