Town Crier Dave Hardesty considers society's wrong turns
Recently, I needed a magnetic compass.
My journey took me through many stores as I attempted to find the item, even though I thought it would be easy.
The young clerks were not of much help. How could they be? They had never seen or used such a device. The older clerks said, “Oh, I remember them; we played with them all the time, and you could find them everywhere.” Technology replaced them.
After a long search, I found one, and as I paid for it, I wondered what I would do had I failed to find it.
I realized this might be the problem with our society. Many of us, it seems, have lost our compass and don’t know which way to turn.
I have witnessed many changes during my lifetime. Some, as with the advances of medicine and some technologies, are good. Others, from my personal observations, may not be so good.
Talking one day on the topic of cell phones, I made the observation that, while these are handy devices, they have changed the shape of our society — not all for the good.
Some people apparently feel that because they have a cell phone, it provides a privilege to use the device, indifferent to those around them, in a theater, in a checkout line, at a church service, during a class and on the early morning commuter bus where all of the passengers are sleeping, save the person yakking on the mobile phone.
Sidebar: If it is a good idea to pass a law not to allow teenage drivers to use cell phones while driving, why do we have to wait until January before it takes effect? Haven’t we killed enough people already?
But it’s not just cell phones. It can be proclaiming a 75 year-old woman as a hero because she placed lives in danger as she took a hammer to equipment in a store owned by Comcast because her phone didn’t work.
Or it could be those teenage drivers.
For the most part, the majority of these students do a good job behind the wheel. Some don’t exercise good judgment, and that causes problems. But for the most part, they are fine.
The problem is those who don’t care about anything — or anyone — but themselves. Where did young people learn this is acceptable behavior? Could it be from their parents who sped all over town, talked on phones and pulled illegal U-turns in the street to drop their children off at school?
Society has enacted laws to contain this type of negative activity from our teens. Some involve parents, who under the law are responsible for their minor children’s actions.
I often hear the lame excuse, “We hold down two jobs to provide for our families, how can we be expected to be responsible for our children all of the time?”
This is the real problem; we have lost our compass. We, as parents, have lost our direction with respect to what is best for our families, and our society suffers as a result.
Where did we get the notion we need two incomes to provide what is best for our families? Where did we get the notion that parents don’t have responsibilities for their children and to society as a whole?
I know single-income families from many financial levels that seem to make it fine on one breadwinner. Yes, it’s difficult, but it’s not impossible. In such a family, there are two jobs: the mother/father who works for the money necessary for the family to survive, and the mother/father who stays at home to raise the children and provide a home.
Unfortunately, many single-parent families are usually just a manifestation of a broken family scenario in which both parents were employed to “make ends meet” and children were left to their own devices.
We need families and children who are intimately involved and not surrogate parents called teachers and “things” given to children to keep them entertained and out of parents’ ways. We need adults who are parents to their children first and friends to their children second.
If parents cannot personally raise and be responsible for their children, they shouldn’t have them.
I pray no one has to endure this, but we need to ask, who will suffer the most at a child’s funeral as a result of reckless driving?
Will it be the parents, or the society that will feel a momentary twinge of regret before it is distracted by something else?
In then end, when our families are gone, how important will our “things” be?
• Dave Hardesty, a satellite communications engineer, is among a select group of local residents rotating their columns in the Sunday Tracy Press.
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And for the record I LOVE my cell phone and am happy to have it and all it's bells and whistles! 
http://www.devicescape.com has a solution that allows you to use the Wi-Fi on your phone to send data without talking. A lot of restaurants have Wi-Fi now. It is becoming popular -- and not just Starbucks. I was at a Paneras Bread yesterday and they now have Wi-Fi. I don't eat out often, but this seems to be catching on. Safeway also has Wi-Fi now, too.
The only requirement is that the phone be equipped with Wi-Fi. Ask your cell-phone provider if they sell a phone with Wi-Fi. If it is WinMobile or Nokia, it may work. And check with Devicescape, thier are giving it away for free.