For years I have been focused on my
family. I have attended countless sporting events and parent teacher
conferences. I have packed too many lunches to count and participated in my
fair share of soccer carpools. I have corrected my children’s grammar, made
sure they were fulfilling their commitments, recorded service hours all while
lovingly guiding them on their path to becoming respectable adults who
contribute to society in a positive way. I don’t often consider myself a deep
thinker or find myself pondering the future of humanity but a recent
observation caused me to look beyond my comfortable little bubble and
contemplate what lies ahead.
On the first day of one of my
classes we took turns introducing ourselves. I realize this is done on the
first day of every class but I felt like the instructor put far too much
emphasis on this. Of course everyone likes to talk about him or herself, and I
like learning about them but we spent and entire hour and fifteen minutes on
introductions. The instructor asked that we give our name and then share
completely irrelevant information; the worst injury we ever had, our worst
date, or an awkward story about a roommate.
As the class shared, I tried to
seem engaged and interested and sometimes I really was. But some of the stories
became so shallow that I found myself baffled, my mouth hanging involuntarily
open is disbelief. One student in particular told us that she was going to
share a “bad date story”. I mentally prepared myself to hear a story of a truly
bad date, as she was the first in the class who had chosen this topic. She went on to tell of an experience
where a guy had sent her a text message asking if she wanted to make out. I
expected her to be appalled by his proposal but she was not. She agreed to go
on the “date” and she fully expected to be picked up and then just spend the
time with him making out. Instead, he picked her up, they met up with another
couple, and they all went bowling. She couldn’t believe it. She was appalled.
Instead of making out they went bowling. How dare he!
I couldn’t fully contain my disgust
and sat in my seat shaking my head. While there were several other shallow
stories being told in the class this was definitely the worst and I noticed at
least a few others around me having a similar reaction to mine. I guess all is
not lost.
While I know the majority of people
do not share my religious beliefs or moral opinions I would hope that young
girls especially would have enough self respect that they would avoid
meaningless behavior, or at least not publicly advertise their promiscuity as
something they value. So, I was left asking myself, “What is this world coming
to?”
