65. Interview with Rose Flagler: Part 2
14 July 2011
– The Food Network’s pleasant. Not like these other channels with the murders and suicides and—lord, it’s sad. So sad. It’s no wonder about this generation.
– But Stephens was slightly older than what I’m used to seeing.
– Twenty-something, at least. Around your age, maybe a little younger, but not too much. You’d think too old to fall in with all that nonsense.
– I thought the fads of today stuck with the grade school children. But maybe that’s just my opinion, based off my own experiences. My generation aged differently than yours. Frank and I met in high school, married at nineteen right before the war.[1]
– He came back from his tour and we had our first daughter, Monica, when I was twenty-four. And I was an adult then. I felt my age and so did the other women around me. It wasn’t too young. It was just right. Frank had his career, I had mine, and we were alright.
– But now, I don’t know.
– Just the way it is. Why, just the other day Sheryl, our second daughter, called to tell us she and her husband are dealing with one of these phases right now with our granddaughter, Marie. Marie just turned thirteen last month and she’s latched on to this new thing. Sheryl told us they’re calling it [Mrs. Flagler pauses, thoughtful] eno. No, sorry, emo. Short for emotional, as in the children who fancy it are very emotional people.
– I can’t understand it at all though. The things Sheryl told us about these emo children, they’re the types of things people used to get psychiatric help for back when I was her age. I mean, they would get a diagnosis and then get therapy. I remember even when Prozac came out years later, the things it was supposed to fix, the things it’s supposed to stop people from doing, those are the same things these kids do for fun now.
– Draft dodgers used to fake being crazy and depressed to stay out of the war. Now we’ve got children faking it for style. Sheryl said they had to take Marie to the hospital for cutting her arm open, nearly bled to death.
– After Marie was discharged, Sheryl made appointments with the school psychologist and spoke with him and, come to find out, Marie’s the fifth child in the past two months. There’s others walking around with scars on their arms from trying to cut themselves.
– Part of the culture’s to wear long sleeves just for that reason, to cover up the marks. My granddaughter—bless her heart— but my granddaughter attempted suicide as a fashion statement.
[1] Judging by Mr. and Mrs. Flagler’s ages, Assumed to mean Vietnam.
Who Is Anthony Stephens? 
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