Popularity

We all know the thing called popularity is such a fickle thing. And ya know, I was quite lucky I got to enjoy quite a bit of it at Youth Group. Not at all at school, but I was generally accepted by most so I was okay.

One of my favorite musicals

But looking at every group I've been a part of, I've seen some odd trend. It's the ones who have something majorly wrong who tend to be the most popular.

Favorite sports team

One of my best friends, Kevin, enjoyed immense popularity at school. But ever since I remember he's had to deal with his dad... who would, aside from all the other bad things, would beat him and his mom on occasion.

His dad didn't use a stick or anything, just his hands

I'm not blaming his dad though, he's gone through years of counselling and genuinely wants to change (he was fine our whole last year of high school; yay), I'm blaming generations of bad parenting... more on that in the post below this one.

Gotta love old people

So, Kevin has been one example. Then there's myself... I have internal troubles, and I've talked enough about those.

Two roads

To be a bit more drastic, look at all of the celebrities out there. The really famous ones come from terrible families, environments, and all of that. To name a few: Michael Jackson, Drew Barrymore, Eminem, Ozzy Osbourne, Oprah Winfrey...

There are some really funny memes like this one out there...

Generations of parenting

Kids in our generation are so much better than those of our parents generations.

Ha, they must be in Florida...

Yes, that is a huge statement, especially as many people don't see any of the good sides of this next generation.

This is what the older generations see...

I'll use my own family as an example. My grandpa wasn't really a dad. In fact, my mom hated his guts till she was 30. My grandpa never held or touched any of his babies, pretty much he'd just say, "Oh, that's nice." All he did was go to work, come home and eat and watch some television show and then go to bed.

I nearly forgot to mention the alcohol...

But when he got mad at one of his kids, he got quite mad. He would just explode. But that was how many of the fathers were in the 1950's. That's just how it was. Of course there were always exceptions, as the tv show Leave It To Beaver.

Of course, I didn't just hear bad stories about him from mi madre and her siblings...there's lots of funny ones...but those are mostly from when he started getting old.

But with every passing generation, the kids have the chance to improve upon the family that they grew up in, to make it better.

Gotta hope for it, but you can't just sit and dream... you gotta get up and make it happen.

The internet helped with that a lot. Over time more and more parenting books, articles, videos, tv shows, and everything started to come out. More information became available to everybody.

That earth should have zillions more dots. There are many more computers than that.

Our parents for the most part (I'm talking about the parents of kids born in the 90's such as myself; maybe late 80's also), have been in that transition between not a lot of parenting skills, and the opposite. Some of them just didn't know what to do with this influx of information, so could be, confusing.

Blogs being stupid... it says "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

Like my friend Kevin, his father is a very confusing case looking at it from the outside.

I really should have put up a picture I took while I was in Bahrain. The lights are red and green at the same time. Confused me at first.

And kids in my generation seem to be much better than those that came before us, already I can see that even at such young ages. No matter how much I may talk crap about my own generation, I believe they are going to end up as great parents. Of course... I could be wrong.

Grada