The hands of the round wall clock slowly ticked off the minutes as I sat staring at the ceiling. Bored out of my mind, I scanned the cluttered area of my bedroom, hoping for a clue that would give me something to do on a Saturday morning other than stare at the cobwebs dangling from the ceiling. My gaze swept by scattered books, CDs, dirty laundry and newspapers. Newspapers. Ha. My mother would think I was an alien if she saw me reading a newspaper. I mean, come on. People my age don't read newspapers. I'd rather watch some boring B-level romantic comedy than drown myself in the gray world of editorials and news. I switched on the TV and surfed through channels for something worth watching.
Interview with GMA. Report on the JDF thingy. News. Even more news. There wasn't anything worth watching. I switched to MTV and a video of some awful teenybopper boy band belting out unintelligible lyrics came on. I turned to the next channel. The sight of a group of people obviously debating some urgent issue would have already given me the signal to switch the channel but the pleading tone of one of the guests made me pause.
"The problem is that the kids don't listen. They don't seem to care about the fragile state of our government." The woman lamented in exasperation.
My brow creased as I pondered on her somewhat offending comment. Kids don't listen? Why don't we listen? Simple. Because anything concerning complicated political jargon and nausea-inducing financial talk bores us to death. Kids don't seem to care about the government? Of course we care. It's just that the information we need is packaged into mind-boggling terms we don't understand and dreary delivery of news that simply doesn't give us the appetites to listen. I mean, who wants to hear some made-up newscaster drone on and on in a ridiculous monotone about the Oakwood incident? Can you blame us? If only they knew how to reach kids my age, everything would be a lot simpler.
