Cat and Harlan Barnard of Deltona, Florida are proud parents of a 17-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter.

Usually, children of that age have certain chores around the house that they are expected to do every day or every week. In capitalistic households, those children might even been given an allowance for performing those chores. Not in the Barnard household.

Evidently, the Barnard children refuse to help with the household chores. They will not wash dishes, take out the trash, do the laundry, or cut the grass. Their parents are fed up and aren’t going to take it anymore.

Do you know what the parents are going to do about it? They are going on strike, by golly. Yep, Cat and Harlan moved out onto the front lawn and are sleeping in tents until their children decide to be more help around the house. The only time that Cat and Harlan go inside the house is to use the bathroom or take a shower. Boy, I bet those kids are scared stiff. They are probably working their fingers to the bone as we speak to get their parents to move back into the house.

I don’t know about you, but somehow I don’t think my parents would have reacted the same way if I had refused to work around the house when I was young.

&uot;Jeff, how about pulling the lawn mower out and cutting the grass,&uot; I can imagine my Dad saying.

&uot;Nah, I don’t think I want to do that today. I think I want to play video games instead,&uot; I would reply.

I can’t imagine a conversation like that happening when I was 17-years-old. I might have tried it once, but that would have been the only time.

I know we all hear it all the time, but youngsters are different now. At 35 years old, it wasn’t that long ago that I was in that group and I imagine that adults were saying the same thing then about me and my group of friends. Young people these days have so much going on with video games, the internet, and television, that just getting out and playing football in the yard is non-existent. Why play football in the yard with your friends when you can sit on the couch and play football on the Play station. Why get in the dirt pile behind the house and play with Tonka trucks when you can watch a video of someone else playing with Tonka trucks.

When I visit Alabama during for Christmas, I will go to my Maw-Maw’s house. If she tells me to get up and mop the floor, then I will get the bucket and get to work. It seems to me that the wrong set of Barnards down in Florida is sleeping in the yard.