Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for June 16, 2019

Show some appreciation, punk.

One refrigerator door lock, coming up.

Dead Civilians = Collateral Damage

Hunger = Food Insecurity

Lies = Alternative Facts

See how much nicer everything sounds when you don’t have to deal with reality?

One big difference between freeloaders and guests is manners.

B.D., you were a police officer at one point in your life. You should just arrest him.

What? No MRE’s laying around?

B.D. acting like a stern father for Father’s Day!

Good to see that the girl is still in the house. But… this mean B.D. is become the father’s figure for all of them?

We need to all start using the line "just because you are feeling [fill in the blank] doesn’t mean you get to [fll in the blank] with the the new young ones. They are the most self-centered generation yet, and I’ve seen a lot of them. This group seems to think they should be able to go through life wrapped in pillows, fed strawberries, and licked by puppies.

Try hiring one. We are in a kinda cool scientific field. Lots of kids grow up saying they want to be us. Actually had one new college graduate exclaim when I called to ask where they were, “What? You mean I have to be there every day?” They quit. Had another one literally whine the job they already had a degree in and was in graduate school for was too “hard” because it meant walking around outdoors and doing physical labor. How did they think all the research got done? They were gone after they cussed out their director when asked to keep going.

It’s happening all over in other fields. Talk to somebody in the trades and it’s worse. Jobs are backed out a year because they can’t find the summer help they used to. And when they get lucky and find a kid, same thing after a day or two, “too hard.” Whereever did they get the idea aching muscles are fatal?

My forehead is flat from banging on my desk.

What’s life as a millennial (or younger) without a sense of entitlement?

And when she asks for another one, he yells “You want more?”

I wonder if B.D. is sorry now that his daughter didn’t enlist.

This scenario is a primo illustration of the main point made in The Coddling of the American Mind, namely that we’ve deteriorated from helicopter parents to bulldozer parents, who try to push anything remotely upsetting out of their kids’ way, leaving them inexperienced with opposition, failure, and compromise; vulnerable; and ill prepared for what they’re bound to encounter as adults in the real world.

Not all parents are like that. Having been a middle school teacher in California before I became a father was a wake up call of sorts. I’m doing my best to teach my children how to handle the (many) disappointments of life. How will they know what’s really good if they think everything’s good?

When did these kids move in? Are there more?

It takes a lot of energy thinking up excuses for not doing your classwork.

I’d really like to see some idiots in here survive on only semen for a couple of months.

At least the girl had the decency to ask!

A friend of mine just told me last week that she noticed vegetables disappearing from her garden. She came home early one day to discover her neighbors in her garden helping themselves (middle-aged adults). Their defense? “You have way more here than your family can eat, so what’s the big deal?!”