Those who lived in the 1960s and 1970s or even way before are acutely aware of how kids are spoiled today.

Case in point. My cousin posted a Facebook photo of her young boys sitting in dental chairs, wearing 3-D glasses and watching videos while dental work was being performed. Have any idea of what we saw as a kid at the dentist? We had to stare into that super bright swivel light, hovering above us like a UFO, blasting us in the face while a stern dentist who seemed to have a hateful disposition to kids worked with the tenderness of a jackhammer operator. Remember the days when you got your choice of colors for fillings - metal, metal and metal. There were no options for white and certainly not mixing colors to match any existing tooth discoloration.

Too many choices today of colors, which bring me to cell phones. Not only do most kids get cell phones without working for them, but they get smart phones and get their pick of color. I had a walkie-talkie that couldn’t get a signal out of a two-mile radius and whose antenna broke all the time. And you haven’t lived until you’ve had to deal with a party line.

We wrote letters by typewriter or hand and sealed them in what was called an envelope and had to lick the stamp. But nobody sends letters or postcards anymore, do they? There was something special about getting a handwritten letter from family, not so much getting a text.

No wonder people are impatient today. They are conditioned to not wait for anything. If we wanted pictures we had to take our film to be processed at the drug or department store or a drive-up kiosk and wait days to see how good or bad they may have turned out. That’s because we didn’t have automatic focus camera. You had to figure out the right combination of F stop and apertures for lighting. And because film was expensive and limited, we didn’t have the luxury of shooting 500 selfies a month or pictures of our dinner on the plate. Do kids even know what film or negatives are today?

When I was a young dad (circa the late 1980s and early 1990s) we loaded the kids up into the car or mini-van and they stared out the window to pass time. As a kid in the back seat, I stared at the moon overhead, wondering how it kept up with the car. My grandkids get to watch videos on TV monitors implanted into the back of the front bucket seats as a way to distract them on long drives. Or hold a cell phone and watch whatever they wish.

If I wanted to hear a favorite song in the 1970’s, Mom had to drive me to the variety store to buy a 45 single of it. And you dare not leave records on the turn table in the hot sun for it warped; if scratched, it would pop.

The other option was to wait until the song came on the radio and hit the record button on the cassette tape recorder. Yeah, the DJ always talked over the beginning and the end but the recording was better than nothing - another reason why expectations weren’t as high. Now it’s all on the smart phone.

We didn’t even have Sony Walkmans when I was a kid. We had transistor radios that sounded like garbage.

I was a kid before cable TV and Netflix. I was stranded in the country with an aerial antenna, limited to whatever signals came in on channels 3, 10, 13 and 40. Dad would have to get on the roof and turn the antenna to get the best signal while someone yelled at him to stop when the clearest picture came on the tube. Channel 19 was worthless. Now if you’re not home to catch a program on cable you can just DVR it.

No, this generation doesn’t miss a beat.

It was black and white TV for me, mind you, which we had to deal with occasional snow and the horizontal roll. Not these HD movie screen quality sets that come as big as your wall and as thin as a pancake and cost you the equivalent of an RV.

There was no such thing as 24-hour cable news networks and thank God for that. We don’t need to be tuned in every single minute to the news because it’s mostly toxic and our brains are not wired for that kind of stress.

There wasn’t even internet news or YouTube either! You had to wait until 6 p.m. for Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, John Chancellor and David Brinkley to tell you what went on in the world that day. But then, those were the days when we were able to respect and trust broadcasters, unlike today’s biased talking heads.

Yes, we had to wait for the 6 o’clock news but I we were more patient.

Because there was no internet, all bills were paid by check, a la more stamp licking in lieu of an app.

We didn’t have computers to copy and paste from the internet and thus avoid thinking for ourselves. We had typewriters and they required some brain work and manual dexterity. There was no auto correct to let us know we spelled a word wrong. But then we were taught how to spell correctly in school unlike how my daughter was told by her teacher to “spell it like you think it should be spelled” and leave it at that. I poured through Encyclopedia Britannica – which our parents spent small fortunes on to advance our education – to dig up information for reports and homework. Now AI will do what you should be doing as creative writing assignments go.

The kids I grew up with didn’t have cars handed to them. I earned mine by working and I was expected to pay for the insurance. No cars with automatic or tinted windows either. We locked the car by hand, not a click on a smart chip key.

Another thing we didn’t have: Traffic loops to detect our entry into a signalized intersection to speed up a green light for us. Back then we had to wait for each and every miserable traffic signal to cycle through regardless of who was or wasn’t approaching. No wonder many drivers have zero patience to pull over for emergency vehicles or stop for a red light.

As kids when we got hurt we didn’t have urgent cares to go to. They didn’t exist. There was no Medi-Flight either. You went by private car or ambulance - on those roads with no traffic loops.

We didn’t have those video games which are rob families of meaningful conversation and productivity around the house.

Chores have gotten easier. Dishes were washed by hand. Kids now don’t even rinse off their dishes before throwing them in their family’s water-efficient dishwasher. But the tradeoff in the process of developing dishpan hands that’s where some of my best and deepest thoughts came from.

I got to know what it’s like riding in the back of a pickup before it was outlawed in 1990. Was it dangerous? Yeah, but so is walking across the street and skydiving but they’re both still legal. At least we were allowed to weigh a risk and enjoy the thrill of surviving the risky. Indeed, most of us lived to tell about it. Today’s politicians think they must protect people from everything. They have sterilized life so severely that it’s hard to have fun.

We also were allowed to do really dangerous things like play in the dirt and ride our bikes in the street, sometimes blocks away from home. We never encountered perverts or gang bangers. Parents today are afraid to let their kids do anything. Amazingly, I never knew one kid who died after getting filthy playing in the dirt.

Not once was there a school shooting when I was a kid. Imagine that. None of my campuses had a wrought iron or cyclone fence around it. They weren’t necessary.

None of my classmates had animosity toward America, despite from where they may have immigrated. We were content to be living in the greatest country where we all felt safe. Not once did a school official forbid one of us students from flying the American flag on our bike because it might incite some migrant students to violence. It was a given that since you were here and enjoying all the USA had to offer that you loved your country and adopted it with fervor.

Conversations around the dinner table were a real thing! There were no cell phones to gaze at while we shoved the food into our mouths.

What changed?

Could it be parents corrected children rather than try to be their best friends (excuse me, besties)?

Could it be that parents are so concerned about their child’s happiness – buying them everything on every whim – that they are preventing them of learning the satisfaction of working to buy what they desire? Is that where the sense of entitlement comes from?

Could there be a link between this self-absorbed generation and its distance from spiritual matters?

On a typical Sunday morning in the period from 1955-58, almost half of all Americans were attending church – the highest percentage in U.S. history. During the 1950s, nationwide church membership grew at a faster rate than the population, from 57 percent of the U.S. population in 1950 to 63.3 percent in 1960. Today, only 20 percent of Americans attend church every week; 41 percent are in church at least once a month; and 57 percent rarely or never walk into a church.

Faith presents the teaching of values to live by such as refraining from cussing out adults and refraining from killing classmates with an assault rifle. Remember those kinds of values?

The era I grew up in had its issues, for sure, but I can’t help but feel that, as we continue finding ways to take hardships out of every aspect of life, we are creating self-centered people who who know nothing about sacrifice and will vote for the one who benefits them the greatest at the expense of the entire country.

You see it in the way liberals are throwing a tantrum and targeting Tesla owners and Elon Musk merely because he is on Trump’s team and threatening the free flow of government freebies and paying for programs that align with their progressive values. Not one dime of taxpayer money should be going to promote DEI let alone promoting transgenderism in any country.

 This column is the opinion of Jeff Benziger, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Ceres Courier or 209 Multimedia Corporation.  How do you feel about this? Let Jeff know at jeffb@cerescourier.com