Jonas Givens Jr Interview

Jonas Givens Jr. is the wise, loving, and caring 84-year-old man who gave me an intriguing look as to what life was like as a child in the 1930’s through being an elderly man in 2015. He is also my last living grandparent and this interview gave me the perfect opportunity to learn more about him and his life. I’ve always been particularly interested in how our childhood and young adult lives differed considering the fact that he always makes it a point to tell me how spoiled the world has me, and how lazy the younger generations are because we have so much technology. Due to him living in South Carolina, I usually communicate with him by calling his house phone since he refuses to buy a cell phone, but for this specific interview I asked

He immediately laughed at this one and took a long deep breath. As stated earlier, he always refers to younger generations as spoiled rotten, rude and lazy. He explained how back when he was a teenager that you could not even think to talk back to your parents without expecting a spanking. “Boy, I tell you, if I could treat some of you youngsters how I would have been treated if I didn’t say yes ma’am or yes sir, or even back sassed an adult, you kids would be in for some big trouble. Unfortunately for me, it’s called child abuse now and I’m too old to go to jail.” It was also interesting to hear him talk about how self-reliant teens were back in the 1940’s. One of his biggest pet peeves about the youth today is that we are not very physically active. Back in the 1940’s youth had to create their own fun outside in the sun and didn’t spend most of their day watching television or on their phones. Furthermore, compared to how teens today rely on smartphones and internet to communicate, teens in the 1940’s had very limited access to house phones and relied mainly on handwritten letters and face-to-face conversation. This initiated him to his next point that their face-to-face conversations obviously meant that they had to meet up with an individual. He uttered, “There was no such thing as whining to Mama and Daddy to drop us off somewhere or to use their car. There were no goober [referring to Uber] cars and for heaven’s sake, I’d never thought I’d live to see the day where you youngsters were too lazy to even walk so you use those electric scooter things now” [referring to the newly introduced hoverboards]. I’m sure my grandfather could go on all day about how lazy and rude teens are nowadays. On the contrary, he did say that one similarity between the two is that teens are still very focused on having an amusing, wild time and