This is really FREE speech!
Volume 2 #10 May 7, 2000
Peer Pressure. That much bandied about phrase. I liken it to mob rule. Kinda like those old "horse operas" where vigilante violence takes control and a bunch of seemingly normal townfolk get fired up and hang the innocent man and then they become the guilty and oh so apologetic ones. "Well, dadburn it. We didn't know some other feller actually done it!" I suppose the deeds of these sheepish followers go as far back as the cave. Say! Maybe Peer Pressure is just a modern cover for "caving in"! I dunno. Just a thought. With "progress", Peer Pressure has taken many costly routes. Some painful to the billfold or, more likely, the plastic paraders. They cannot live without the Peer Pressure essentials. The Calvin Klein jeans for casual Fridays. Not just the regular over priced ones but the $150 plus "rip-off-the-fools" editions. Think about it, you over-the-hill yuppies - - - they are only jeans! That's merely the drool dripping tease of what else the balding over extended (in more "weighs" than one) mob suckers will succumb to. There "have to have" list is longer than Gotti's rap sheet. Too bad we don't employ an old British penalty: debtors prison. These monetarily bereft might learn how to budget. Nah - - - their coveting instincts are incurable! Unfortunately, Peer Pressure's most painful inroads strike the young: the teenagers and even preteens. They indulge in drugs that flow into a river of drowning titles that would boggle a Rhodes Scholar's impeccable tracking intellect. This is the wading pool for these ill-supervised children. Their descent is fathoms deep. We see the horror stories on television news. Read it in the newspaper. The sound bites and quotes from parents or whomever are the designated guardians ring like rote. They proclaim that it is Peer Pressure. COP OUT!! Edict: know where your young charges are. Become a part of their lives and their friends' lives. You may lose. But you will know that you loved and tried. I think that's all these Peer Pressured kids want. By the way, here is a prickly ponder. Whatever became of Individual Pressure??
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