Kids These Days

(This is a parable of something which transpired recently here in the comments. For your amusement…)
*sigh* Another wasted day.
John had just been told the truck delivering his trusses was broke down twenty miles from town. The job site continued to hum, and John would get paid the same either way, but he was really looking forward to personally seeing them installed. He was a construction engineer, not a truck mechanic.
He was close friends with one of the contractors, Charles, who called him over to his truck. Pulling a lever, Charles leaned the back of the seat forward and pointed behind it. “Take a look John. Know what this is?”
John looked and saw the gleaming blade of a competition rapier. Oh, the memories that brought back! He and Charles were co-captians of their fencing team in college. Neither were Olympics or pro material, but both were among the top league fencers. Charles pulled it out and handed it to John. “You need to feel this thing, man.”
Charles took a call on his cell phone and stepped away, telling John he could play with it awhile. John held it, and realized his body had never forgotten what to do with it. The work site was intended to be a hotel and convention center on the beach. Staying within the fenced area, John wandered toward the ribbon of sand, where some wild vegetation still grew.
He glanced back at Charles, then took a couple of swipes at a bush. The thrill was instantly alive, before the clipped vegetation had hit the ground.
Just outside the fence on the beach, a voice called to him. Looking over, John saw a rather young boy. He held something long and thing in his hand, and beckoned with it for John to come around the end of the fence. John decided to humor the boy and see what he wanted. It took only a few minutes of walking in the soft sand. The boy had moved closer to the end of the fence, down near the water.
As John came around the end of the fence, he saw the boy was building a sand castle. Well, it was actually a row of cylindrical sand piles, perhaps a half dozen, and the boy was completing the last. He overturned a small plastic bucket of wet sand, slapped it down, then twisted it around a few times jerkily, causing the load of wet sand to release and left it standing in the shape of the plastic bucket.
Lying on the sand next to him was a plastic sword. The boy looked up. “Here, mister, you can defend this castle while I attack it.”
John considered this for a moment. “You’re going to attack with your plastic sword…”
“And you can defend with your sword!” The boy seemed utterly confident of his success. “You’ll need the castle, because I’m the greatest swordsman on the beach.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” John started.
“You aren’t afraid, are you, mister? Do you think you can build a better castle?”
John glanced at the construction site, with it’s massive framework already in place. “I’m building that right now,” John gestured with his sword.
“That’s nothing. The next big wave will knock it all down!”
John smiled, then turned to go. “You go ahead and enjoy yourself. I need to give this very dangerous weapon back to its owner.”
“That thing? Dangerous? Ha!” Then the boy started yelling, “Come back here, you coward!” He slapped his plastic sword noisily on the wet sand.
John didn’t look back. Kids these days!