Evidence that our children are drinking too much caffeine

I received a couple of cards from a couple of Dodger fans recently that are really making me question the mental sharpness of our youth.

Sure, these cards are from over 20 years ago, but are we really seeing more intelligent kids coming out of our classrooms today? (I have no facts to back up this sweeping implication).

Look at this card. Someone is seriously deficient in the paper-cutting arts.

This is some sort of National Highway Traffic Safety card. It's slightly smaller than your average card, and that's before someone took a screwdriver, or whatever inadequate tool  it was, to cut the card out. I'll give the youngster passing grades for the top edge and even the left edge (which looks suspiciously O-Pee-Chee-ish). But things went a little haywire on the right side and the bottom. It looks like he/she even bent the card in the cutting process.

This card was sent to me by Spiegel. I hope he didn't pay anything for it.

Here is a card sent to me by Greg at Plaschke, Thy Sweater Is Argyle:

Goodness. What geometric shape would that be?

This looks like a combination of cutting, tearing and "look the entire picture is still intact!" No coincidence that this card came off a Drake's box (the back advertises a spelling-challenged treat called "Donut Delites.") The kid probably consumed the contents of the entire box in one sitting before cutting the card.

But my theory is that they were actually wired on caffeine.

If you haven't noticed, kids drink an extraordinary amount of pop/soda. When my daughter was tiny, I was horrified by stories of mothers who put Pepsi in their kids' baby bottles. And then I saw it with my own eyes.

My daughter won't drink soft drinks. She doesn't like them. But when she is at a party or when there is a function at school, she is the only one who doesn't have a soft drink. Sometimes, when there is a function where there are no soft drinks, the kids stumble around in a sugar-deprived semi-coma wondering what in the world they will drink (uh, milk?).

My daughter takes after me, although I always wanted soda, I just never could get it.

My mother had strict rules -- the only time we could have soda was when we were being served pizza.

Fortunately, pizza was a meal choice maybe every other week. But it still didn't come often enough for me.

Of course, with all that deprivation, when I moved out of the house, I went on a soda and beer binge. Which  probably led me to the dietary issues I have today. (Well, this turned out happy).

But my soda-less ways as a kid DID keep my cutting skills sharp.

That's a 1977 Hostess card, cut off a panel by yours truly as an 11-year-old. Ignore the rounded corners. That's a time issue.

The edges aren't exactly straight. But you can see the attempt to keep them straight. Slow and steady wins the race. That's a milk and juice diet there, my friend.

I probably cut the card down too close. I had a thing about the dotted lines showing, so I wanted to make sure you couldn't see them. But otherwise, you can still tell it's a rectangle -- which I think was the way God intended cards to be -- rectangle, circle, SOME sort of definable geometric shape.

Greg also sent me some cards to satisfy my straight-edge obsession.

This is not your average Super Star sticker from 1988. It's an O-Pee-Chee Super Star sticker! I didn't know these even existed. You'll note the crease. But I was too busy admiring the straight lines to see the crease right away.

And here is the star of the show. An autographed card of Josh Lindblom. Remember him. I expect great things.

This card has all the "s" words going for it. Sterling. Shiny. Snazzy. Sharp-cornered. Straight-edged. Nobody cut this thing off a box.

Cards cut by kids who don't know there way around a pair of scissors has a certain charm, but I still have this thing about liking my cards rectangular.

And soft drinks are out of the question for good now, so there's no changing that opinion.