Realizing accusation of ‘selfish generation’ correct

You never knew what to expect in John McDonald’s social studies class. For the first 10 minutes, he might try to shame his seventh or eighth graders into buying tickets to a charity event for which he was the faculty advisor.

For the next five minutes, he’d talk up the school musical he was directing and the varsity baseball team he coached. Then he’d teach some history.

Before class was over, he’d probably point to a student who wasn’t paying attention — say, “Walter Splimetik” —and make up a nickname to show his displeasure.

“Walter Split Headache doesn’t care to learn anything that doesn’t interest Walter Split Headache,” he’d grumble. “He thinks it won’t matter.”

Then there were the rants about the rest of us. “You know more about Mick Jagger than you do about the Founding Fathers,” he’d yell after hearing some of us at the start of class muse about the Rolling Stones.

Often he’d reduce our collective primary flaw to just four words, which he’d repeat over and over in an exaggerated whine: “Gimme gimme gimme! I want I want I want!” That, he said, was our generation’s calling card.

Back in the 1970s, at my junior high school in Westbury, on Long Island, Mr. McDonald was a force of nature.

Physically, you couldn’t miss him, with his broad shoulders, crew cut and red nose. Emotionally, you either loved or loathed him.

He never married, and we easily joked that he was involved in so many school activities that he simply had no time.

Fascinating memories. But what’s most fascinating, as I now realize, is that, 50 years ago, Mr. McDonald knew exactly why we’re in the situation we’re in today.

We’ve been pampered by our collective good fortune.

On a terrestrial level, after millions of years of meteor strikes, earthquakes, tsunamis and environmental fluctuations, the Earth still turns.

On a human level, after catastrophic conflicts, cataclysmic plagues and numerous genocides, as a species we’re still kicking around.

On a national level, after a devastating Civil War, countless riots, civil disorder, terrorism, blistering social inequality and scores of dreadful politicians, the American flag still waves.

We’re spoiled. We don’t think anything truly disastrous will ever happen.

Many of us refuse to believe that just one administration can put an end to the American experiment and that just one virus can wipe us out.

We care only about our own pleasures, possessions and personal choices, about despising others who don’t believe what we do, and about calling our own shots because we’re too stubborn to consider that sometimes we don’t know enough to make the right decisions on our own.

Too many of us are far more interested in living for the present than we are in learning from the past or planning for the future.

We still have far too little information about COVID-19 to understand how to safeguard the human race against it. It’s a complete unknown. Yet, we don’t want people telling us what to do.

We’re certain we’ll get through it unscathed.

So we complain bitterly about wearing masks and about not opening everything up to the extent we’d like.

Those who provide wholesale support to the current administration seem to like the fact that the president appears independent in spirit and confident in his decisions.

Even though a deep psychological dive into reality shows that the president is actually weak and careless, his defenders ignore that because they believe nothing can destroy us.

Not even Trump.

Many of the Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers in Mr. McDonald’s classes are the ones calling the shots today, either as politicians, bosses or simply domestic decision-makers lot of gimme gimme gimme, I want I want I want kind of people. And since so many of them seem bent on remaining just as he painted them — the selfish generation — all we can do is hope for the best.

Those of us who are as chastened by the fear of the unknown as we were by Mr. McDonald’s classroom rants will just have to find a way to deal with our splitting headaches.

Joel Samberg of Avon is a journalist and the author of several fiction and nonfiction books, most recently the coming-ofage novel “Blowin’ in the Wind” and, as co-author with Gibbs Williams, PhD, “Smack in the Middle: My Turbulent Time Treating Heroin Addicts at Odyssey House.”