"With a Conscience" -"Questions"

                "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." Friedrich Nietzsche

I'm not going to speak for anyone else but I have quite a few "why" questions on my plate and sadly, or perhaps curiously, no one, family, friends, no one has been able to help me answer them. For instance...

• Why are babies constantly used in commercials that have absolutely nothing to do with well...babies?  To me, the message is "Let's just push our children to grow up faster so that they'll become savvy, stock marketeers and credit card holders who will make millions before they're out of  diapers.  Or perhaps, they're saying to the American public, "You have the intelligence of an infant and can't be trusted to take care of your money.  Soooooo....we'll invest it for you."  We all understand now, how well that worked out.
• Why is it that every time I go to the pharmacy, there's a new product on the market for wrinkles and age spots?  Really?  Why are women constantly under fire to get rid of those well deserved signs of maturity?  I earned every single one of my imperfections.  To deny that they exist or that I can wipe away years of life's trials and errors and experience is unthinkable.  I look in the mirror and see a survivor in every line. Please note--extreme facial hair along the upper lip is another story.  Plucking will always make sense to me.
• Why is it cute for advertisers and their clients to misspell words continually?  I went to "Planet Fitness" for my regular hour of torture and on the wall is their "Customer Creed" with more misspellings and capitalization errors than I've seen in one 8th grade research paper.  Why?  When did grammar become passe folks? You don't even have to spell anymore if you own a tablet or iPad computer because with a few touches on the screen, the computer spells for YOU!!!  Really? Explain this to me please because correct me if I'm wrong, young people still have to write essays for college entrance exams and standardized tests (This will be another "why" shortly.) and oh yeah, COLLEGE CLASSES?  Try landing a job when you don't care to  spell out the words that usually take the place of smiley faces nowadays. It's not cute to play on the public's ignorance nor is it appropriate to encourage ignorance as a way to gain our attention to buy more of your products.  Perpetuation of ignorance is precisely why our "Education Nation" is suffering terribly.   Writing is our bastion of self-expression and our door to a civilized world where ideas grow and multiple into concrete solutions to our toughest problems.  Why we have chosen to cheapen that is something I do not understand.
• Now, on to standardized testing.  Why have "we," I mean "them" - Those elected to be our voice in government- decided  that standardized testing is the only way to gauge what a student in public education is learning? Isn't the point of testing to actually assess what a teacher has actually taught during the year?  Why have the  assessments of our children been taken out of the hands of those best suited and with the expertise to do the assessing?  If this is as creative and as bold as we can be in making our young people more competitive, than this is exactly why we are having the problems we have.  Education has become more expensive but not necessarily more effective and you know why?  Because, we turned our back on the importance of parenting.  Within the past two decades, it has become more fashionable to have children, but not necessarily to parent them.  Children need to be reminded that while Mom and Dad are out working two jobs to pay for cell phones, Nikes and X-boxes, and the mortgage, they have a job too....and that is to become educated and take their education seriously. 
• Why is McDonald's promoting healthy food like oatmeal and yogurt?  Face it "Mickey D's"....You're not healthy.  We don't go through the "drive-thru" to be healthy.  We "drive-thru" because we want the double cheese burger and fries, with milk-shake because we've had a crumby day.  Stop pre-tending you're health-oriented.  You're not and we accept that.
• Why are petite styles in stores like Macy's and J.C. Penney's NOT petite?  Look, I'm 53 inches tall and when I go shopping, I want to go to the petite section your department store, pull out my size 8 pants and be done with it!  "Really?"  Come on!  I am a true petite!  I don't want to go and pull a pair of pants off the rack and have a "petite" pant flow 24 inches beyond my ankles!!!  Really? Same goes for skirts, dresses and oh yes, blouses.  My arms are NOT the size of a tall person's so stop promoting petite styles that aren't well...petite.
  
  I know folks, this was a lot to take in for this column...but it was fun!  I'm being honest! It was fun!  Be well...I hope some of you got a laugh.