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When Children Were Children
Paying the price for our neglect
By Sharon Hopper

I apologize for the absence of my articles the past couple weeks, but after the horrible thing that happened in Sandy Hook School it has been a rather thought provoking time and a time of great reflection on days gone by. What has happened to us as a people that we have so many monsters running loose out there to harm just about anyone. And because they usually commit suicide after such an act, we will probably never really know the answers…

When I was a child I would be angry and would act out my anger in my imagination. Sometimes as an adult I still do the same thing, however I know that harming another is not going to solve my problem or my anger. The consequence is prison or death, neither of which I am in a hurry to experience. But let me get to the children.

I cannot imagine going to school with the knowledge that someone might come into that building and hurt us, let alone kill us. As a child school was a wonderful place where you played, wrote notes, learned about life, and math, reading, and geography. I don’t think they do that one anymore because the people on Jay Leno never know where anything is at. The other night I watched a program where the teacher asked if anyone could tell him about pie. No one could answer the question, however I observed several students texting on their cell phones. Then I looked at my computer keyboard and could not figure out a way to make the pie symbol.

That really got me to thinking. In today’s world do we really need to learn it? And to have a phone in school was impossible, so notes were the best way to communicate. Sometimes getting them passed was a problem, because the person having the note could do one of two things. Tear it up or tell the teacher and get one into a pile or trouble. In my school career I had my share of both. That small type of incident could ruin several days of school for me. Can you imagine those kids going back to school after knowing that someone came in to intentionally hurt them and I think in a lot of cases they even knew the person. How utterly disturbing. I cannot imagine school today with cell phones, personal computers, and teachers on the internet. Where is the personal contact?

And they return home to a flood of reporters on every television talk program asking the same questions over and over and the fight about guns, and computer games. Turning on the television is difficult at best for an adult, let alone a child. Some say they do not pay attention to the media on television. I say they are crazy. Children hear far more that we realize and they form opinions unto themselves that the adult world is oblivious of understanding. I prefer the wonderful innocence we had as children. No need to hurry the growing up experience. It was going to happen anyway. Well that world is gone forever.

I wonder… What do we expect to learn from all this. I say that because it has gotten worse and I don’t think we have learned a thing. Oh! I almost forgot. When I was child we talked about the Ten Commandments and said a prayer every morning. It has been many years now since that has been done away with. And the filthy words I hear coming out of the mouths of so many young people. Golly if we said a swear word in school or on the bus there was hell to pay. I wonder! Could there be a correlation to all this evil. Could it be that as adults we have by default guided an entire generation into hell? When we were children we were far happier than the children of today. Much less stress. And much more love and communication.

How many more schools will get shot up before someone wakes up and declares the Civil Rights of living. The right to demand civility, decency, respect, and all the good things that we had to learn to become the greatest generation of all time. I wonder when did we the everyday people become sheep following a minority, instead of the shepherds demanding human values in these great United States. The children will have to pay the price for our neglect.

By Sharon Hopper


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