Tuesday 19 October 2021

The 'Lost' Generation

 When I was in the Air Force.....about once every four months....someone would post a note on the entry door of the barracks.  It typically read 'Maintenance folks coming next Monday afternoon to repair such-and-such'.  

They did the warning note mostly to ensure you didn't have some rendezvous going on with some lady.   

I noticed this week.....a private Ohio college....Oberlin College (liberal arts school) had posted up a maintenance warning like this, for radiators.  Yeah, these weren't ultra modern dorms....these were the old style which still had radiators, and they were installing new ones.  

I admit.....it's late in the season to do this, and it probably should have been in July.

So here's the thing (reported in the news).....college kids got upset and scared....mostly because maintenance MEN were the ones showing up and doing the work.  The dorms you see.....were supposed to be 'safe-zones' for women and trans people.

In simple terms....this maintenance situation became a four-star 'goat-rope' (a 1950s term for a cluster-fu*k).

I sat and thought about this dilemma.

How could these college kids survive riding on aircraft, trains, or buses?

How could these college kids survive with home repair being done mostly by husky guys with beards?

How could these college kids survive with their transmission repair job being done by big chunky men?

How could these college kids survive with taxis being driven by Afghan Islamic characters?

The list goes on and on.  They will graduate....attempt to pursue careers in the real world, then find that their fantasy world easy collapses without much effort.

The question to ask.....how did we reach this stage where people freak out over guys replacing radiators?