I fear for our future.

That’s not based on any 2012 apocalyptic scenarios or the coming pollen season, but rather what I have observed with today’s youth.

I posted a pair of stories related to this topic a few years ago — one about a kid who failed at using a rolling backpack and one I saw eating grass in a high horse-traffic area.

Today, I saw another disturbing sight while driving home from work.

On a two-lane road, I came up to a line of cars that had stopped for a school bus. I looked to the left of the bus just in time to see a kid emerge from inside a van parked at the top of a driveway and run onto the bus. As the bus pulled away, the van drove down the driveway back to the house about 200 feet away.

I drove on, and my sleep-deprived brain slowly started to put the situation together. A parent had loaded their child into a van, driven them to the top of their driveway 200 feet away and waited there for the bus to come.

Have kids become that soft? They can’t walk to a bus stop 200 feet away and wait outside in 50-degree weather?

My elementary school was almost a mile from my house, and I walked to and from school all the time. Sometimes I rode my bike…while carrying a violin case. The weather didn’t matter.

Of course, maybe that just makes me one of those geezers talking about going five miles through knee-deep snow uphill both ways.