Page:The High School Boy and His Problems (1920).pdf/128



The social activities of the young almost always seem excessive to the middle-aged. There are few things we forget so easily as the escapades of youth. A middle-aged father was advising his young son against the evils of dancing.

"But you danced, father, when you were a boy," the son protested.

"True," the father replied, "but I have seen the folly of it."

"Well," the boy replied, "I want to see the folly of it, too."

It is a very normal desire for a young boy to want to have regular and pleasant association with other young people both girls and boys, and in what I say in this paper I do not overlook this fact. It is a desire the gratification of which may very easily be carried to excess; it is a desire which parents, especially fathers, are wont to forget that they ever themselves felt. I have never had a son, I am sorry to say, to whom I could tell how hard I worked when a boy, how little money I spent, how seldom I stayed out at night or went to social parties, but I have listened to other fathers discoursing thus virtuously to their sons, so I know that they had forgotten their youth as I might have done had I but had a chance. Social customs change.