Opinion’s, When They Mattered More Than Our Own

By Randell A. Monaco
January 17, 2011

I have a theory about younger generations which I suppose includes some Baby Boomers. As I recall growing up, we got up and out of the house early because if we sat around the house our folks would surely find more chores to fill our day. My mother’s family had a farm and father’s family a restaurant so work was a 7 day a week thing.

Most of us who were born in the early 50’s didn’t watch TV all day and sat down to eat our meals at the same time, together. We played baseball, football, basketball and hockey. Our parents didn’t organize or referee our games. We learned and agreed on our rules, organized our games and resolved our disputes so we could keep on playing together, always without the help of adults. You could take your bat and ball and go home but that isn’t what any of us wanted to do. Maybe it was going home to more chores? I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t want to play until dark or would rather go home before our parents expected us.

Our perceptions of the world were not handed to us by sitcoms like Three’s Company, Friends, or Two and a Half Men. We might have seen Lassie or Leave it to Beaver, but it would have been raining outside on that day.

I remember that my family bought my grandmother a color television while I was in the Marines and that I hadn’t actually watched a color television until after my discharge in 1972. As best as I can figure, that was about the time that television took over the role of the family baby sitter. This is not a researched opinion, just my recollection and some reflective observations, mind you.

When you think about how people behave and treat each other these days, particularly in the virtual spaces, I wonder how much the television, not just programming but television itself, changed the behavior of society.

I can tell you that we treated out neighbors better on the farm because we depended on each other’s equipment and man power come harvest time for example. In the restaurant, which was not alongside a freeway but in a city neighborhood where generations of families grew up (over 65 years to date), we treated our customers as though we wanted their business and that their satisfaction was our commitment. We didn’t tell them that - we showed them every opportunity we got.

As I recall, we wanted to know their opinions because they actually mattered to us more than our own opinions. In fact, we wanted to know why, because we were never of the opinion that we automatically knew more than our customers and neighbors. We wanted to know.

Does it matter whether you live in the city or on a farm? Not in my experiences. But it may now that television programming is the family baby sitter and politically divisive news casting, tells America what to think, how and who’s “right.” I just don’t know.