WHAT CHANGED?

Hello readers, this is a new series you will be reading about and it is focused on analyzing the lifestyle of our parents and ourselves when we were young compared to the present generation of young people. Your participation is important as we would really like to know reasons for the disparity in the generations.

I heard the story below from an elderly woman about when she was young. 

One day, her mum was going to the market and she insisted that she follow her against her mum’s reservations. She just wanted to go out, have fun, and lastly to ease her mum’s trip to the market.  

It started off well until they walked into a very busy street, then the work began even before she got to the market’. E ka ro ma’, ‘E ka ro Sir’ (‘Good morning Ma’, ‘Good morning Sir’), she said while bending her knees as it was the custom of the Yoruba people to greet everyone that walked pass them, whether young , old or whether they were known or not. After about 50 rounds of that, her knees began to feeble and she decided to take a break from kneeling while she greeted.



Immediately, something else came in for her; it was a slap on her back, very serious scolding and an embarrassing epistle of how rude she was to greet an elder without going on her knees. I guess she preferred the former to the later as she continued to kneel as she greeted everyone that walked pass them. So, the supposed fun trip turned into an exercise drill and she was exhausted at the end of the day.

Present day young child.

Today’s’ children never cease to amaze me, sometimes they actually wait for the adult to greet them before they respond or most times they simply just walk pass as if one is invisible or just go ahead with other things.  This is usually with adults they know how much more those they do not know.

READERS ‘WHAT CHANGED?’