When Life Was Simpler

by Twan - Aries

When I was a young boy, I had visions of fame
Not knowing at the time that sometimes being famous made you lame
There was no internet, even then there were party lines
No one around us said that work was going back to the mines
We ran the streets with impunity, invincible to to pain
And we played in the backyards, hoping it'd never rain
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of living like a king
We weren't worried, we'd get the chance to lift all our voices and sing
Inside twenty seconds, puberty nowhere in sight
We don't know sex is a good thing, and we assume it only happens at night

Kids speak little of substance, and know even less
We didn't worry about it, someone would clean up this mess.
We didn't worry about the "real world" we were still too young
And knew nothing about the rest of the city until we were flung
To places we'd never seen or known about
To places where men who didn't hold office held clout
Well, who doesn't like the president? Why wouldn't they?
Not knowing that their opinion changed of him day to day
and make no mistake, it was always "President,Mister"
For a woman? She'd go to pieces until the First Husband kissed her.
Life was filled with the countdown til early June
And that number loomed larger than the snobbery of Bowie Kuhn. 
Baseball? What's wrong with you, kid, watch the court
I knew more about a bat and a ball than how to import
And we had no iPods, we still had cassettes and tapes
Who cares about Donald Trump and who is Marla Mapes?
All we know could fit in a thimble, and please don't dump it out
For it took us forever to win that particular bout
And what's a Playstation? We're still trying to beat Super and Seg
Adult supervision to ask: What's a peg?
We run everywhere, but the years are passing....

Now technology wins the day on a regular basis by a beating
People find love and sex routinely with NetMeeting
And children no more, those of us that live
now find ourselves demanded of something to give
When life was simpler, well what did we expect
For many of us to be by adulthood complete wrecks?
All solutions have consequences heretofore unseen
New worlds have opened, on which we are all keen
There will never be a video game crash again, because now they know more then they did before
in their cases the adage is true: Less will always be more

And what of us, trapped in that era where ignorance was bliss
When we jealously refer to the past as this great utopia that the younger have missed
Shadows of those days lengthen, reminding us again
that many of those that were with us didn't follow us in
So long to those days, they ain't ever coming back
And we should be grateful, that our world doesn't crack.
Fear is relative, and the monsters under your bed
is only a product of what someone's put in your head
As disconcerting, and disorienting, as disenchanting as it is to state
Truthfully, life then wasn't really that great.
Birth sign: Aries
Date created: 2011-01-14 15:26:02
Last updated: 2021-04-14 17:18:17
Poem ID: 72219

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