By BILLY MURPHY
Laugh Lines

When I was just a kid — before Ginger from “Gilligan's Island” sent me headlong into puberty — my older brother got into serious trouble with my parents for buying a “Jethro Tull” album. Now recently, and quite a few years later, my good friend Jamie and his wife Misty went to Chastain Park to see Jethro Tull. This is not odd for our generation to revisit such nostalgia, but Jamie and Misty took their 2-year-old triplet girls.

Before you prepare your diatribe on proper parenting, consider my point in bringing this up. What was once thought of as dangerous, immoral and loud is now just elevator music by comparison. What my generation thought was rebellious is now just quaint.

I feel like Greg Brady demanding his own room so he could have some privacy to stare at his lava lamp and black light posters. I would say I fear for this generation, but I will leave that for our politicians and preachers. I can only laugh at the silly things we have become.

I was coming out of a restaurant the other day and saw a little girl, about 9 or 10 years old with a tattoo. Hopefully it was a “press-on,” but what made it disturbingly goofy was that it was applied at her waist, in the rear, extending down into her jeans. Just who put that there?

I wet and apply Pokemon tattoos on my 4-year-old Olivia regularly, but what was the mother of this child thinking? In their house have they given up playing Barbie to play Jennifer Lopez:

“Quit playing and come down for dinner, Bethany.”

“Just a minute, mom.”

(Child acting out with dolls...) “Oh Puff Daddy, I love your white fur coat... Wassup, Jennifer, I love your see-through dress and 6-inch pumps, but where will you hide my pistol if the cops come?”

In the land of the Internet, 99 TV channels and the teenage navel ring, we are primed to find our footing, I just know it. Our kids have had such access and for so long, that they really are bored for what works for them the best: just a little attention from mom and dad.

While watching the fireworks on the 4th of July, my 2-year-old Davis asked me to take him to bed. He fell asleep during the grand finale, no less.

So, what of Jamie and Misty and their triplets? Which is better? To leave the kids home with a sitter (who most likely is pressing play to porno-rapper Eminem the moment parents walk out the door) or to drag them along to see the retro version of a rock band who in the '70s had the insolence and vulgarity to mention “snot” in one of their songs.

It is great that our generation of older parents is hauling their kids along with them everywhere. Not to mention in Jamie and Misty's case their girls will turn out to be heavy metal music aficionados. Though they are only 2, Jamie related to me his girls' conversation at the show.

Ashton: “Is that a Marshall Stack with a 40-inch cabinet?”

Brennen: “Don't be a dweeb, you're thinking about The Who's rig.

Chandler: “You are both wrong, Marshall doesn't even make a... oops, I just did a boo-boo in my diaper.”

Times have changed. Innocence might just be lost. But that is even more reason to hold those things dear, closer to us than ever; even if it just happens to be at an encore of Aqua Lung.

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