【正文】
mples of many of the things that i thought my parents were unreasonable about. today, however, i am also the father of a boy of fifteen, and i find that i, too, am pressuring my son with a lot of rules and regulations that he seems to find hard to swallow. the other day, i noticed that my son’s hair was altogether too long, so i told him to go to the barber’s and get it trimmed short. ordinarily, he is fairly obedient, but this time he put his foot down. “what’s wrong with long hair?” he said. “all my buddies have long hair. and besides, it’s my own hair, isn’t it? i don’t think you have the au thority to order me to cut it short, even if you’re my father!” when i was a boy, if i had spoken with such impertinence to my father, i know that he would have given me a good thrashing. but i suddenly realized that we are now living in a more liberal world, and that my son’s insistence on wearing his hair long was merely an instance of the generation gap that existed between us. so i relented, and so he still wears his hair long.