Cyberbullying my child

“I swear to God, your fucking generation” has become something of a mantra of mine recently. In part because I’m old, but mostly because in very short order my kid and his classmates will be able to vote and I’m a little worried that Senator Samurai Jack may be coming down the pike.
I’m stuck in that weird middle ground. My dad is traveling and needed me to book his flight and car because….because his computer is broken is going to be an easier explanation than the truth, so let’s go with that. Anyway, I get that done and give him the confirmation numbers but as a backup I made PDFs and printed the hardcopy to mail to him. But I gave the paper, envelope, stamps and return address sticker to my kid who subsequently failed FIVE TIMES IN A FUCKING ROW to properly address an envelope. The first time, he put the destination address in the upper left corner of the envelope where the return address should be and the return address sticker right below the stamp. Which okay, let’s chalk that one up to an age where everybody emails stuff. Fine, take your mulligan. There’s a basket full of my unopened mail right there you can check to see how it should be done, but okay, you get a do over.

Second time he gets the return addresses right but then doesn’t put the name above the destination address. To be fair, it’s going to one house, I’m sure they can figure out who it’s for, but how fucking hard is it to put a name on an envelope? Pretty hard apparently. Because the third time, he put the name right under the return address sticker so graciously provided to me by the Heart Association or Cancer Society or whatever charity it was I donated to in the hopes that they find a cure before I get whatever it is. If my child’s classmates are going to be taking over this research in the near future that was a bad investment. I’m going to have a stroke and the valedictorian from his class is going to try to give me cough syrup.

So the fourth time he’s nearly got it, except the street number and the street name usually go on the same line. But not when he does it. Number, new line, street name. At this point I was kind of surprised he managed to lick the envelope closed. Until I realized that it was one of those sticker envelopes so all he had to do was peel the thing off the back and press down. Which is probably a good thing because I don’t imagine that glue stuff makes you smarter when you lick it and at this point we’re working with a limited number of neutral connections already dwindling faster than the glaciers.

Five tries. Five tries it took a nearly-adult to properly address an envelope to send. It took five tries and a metric fuck ton of correction tape. (Don’t worry, I won’t make you do the conversion to Imperial). I started to feel sorry for the postal worker that has to read this address looking like it was scrawled by a five year old, but then I realized that I should feel sorry for all of us. This is the generation who will decide what happens in a few years. They’re entrusted with computing power surpassing all of NASA during space race, some of them are starting to drive, a few can swear in foreign languages and may be entering the Foreign Service. And yet, if required to do so today, he couldn’t properly mail in payment to keep the power from being shut off. I no longer feel bad for the postal worker trying to decipher an encoded envelope. I weep for us all. I weep for Western civilization. I swear to God, your fucking generation.