Everyone says it. Kids’ eyes roll when they hear it. But I’m convinced that teenagers are really a different species than they were back when I was one of them.
Oh I know plenty of nice, polite, and helpful teens, I really do. But that’s the difference – they have met me via their parents or another similar situation so there’s a built in respect or fake-respect factor! It’s the stranger teens that can be problematic.
Often times as I’m leaving the radio station for the day, area schools have just let out so I’m usually swimming alone on the sidewalk toward a school of adolescent fish. Yesterday I decided to conduct a little experiment. Instead of moving slightly aside as any thinking human would do to allow the three-abreast teens to pass by, I stood my concrete and forged ahead. Toward me they came, a mass of giggling, jiggling flesh. The first group was male and at the very last second before my handbag struck his backpack, the young lad closest to me side-stepped out of my path. I could almost read his mind: Wow, that woman is ANCIENT. She’s as old as Mom and probably brittle! I’d better move or the impact could shatter her!
Next came the girls, three in a row, taking up every possible inch of sidewalk real estate. At the last second I curled in my shoulder to avoid a direct impact but they kept on coming without so much as a deke or an adjustment in pace. “What the hell?” I said to the girl whose shoulder lightly struck my own. She and her friends erupted in giggles that told me they assumed I had never been told that teen girls ruled the world and it was my responsibility to bend to their significant will!
Earlier in the week I had the misfortune of needing to visit a mall in that dead zone between school letting out and buses arriving to pick up the students. Usually it’s the smokers who put a grimace on my face as they gather outside of a building to cloud the air for everyone else who has no choice but to enter there. But this time it was the teens, specifically the teen couples, making out on the steps to the entrance. Making out is a very nice way of saying they were totally going for it! My stomach did flips and my gag reflex threatened to engage as tongues extended several feet into the mouths of beloveds and hands crawled like spiders all over young bodies. It was absolutely gross, like the beginnings of a pubescent orgy there on the way into Zellers. I choked back the urge to yell, GET A ROOM knowing that the reaction would be that I was a dinosaur, out of touch, and surely unwise in the ways of sex and love.
I had a brief flash of genius: I would take photos of these kids and post them on a website so their parents could see how they behaved after class!
And then I remembered I wasn’t Queen of the World.
It truly was nauseating, all that moaning, fondling and saliva and all I wanted to do was get to the machine that spit out new stickers for my vehicles. It’s such a cliche but when I was that age, I never in a million years would have groped and French kissed someone in public or acted as if the sidewalk was my own personal acreage. I just wouldn’t be so disrespectful. But that’s me and the way I was raised. And clearly, that’s not the way their parents raised them. Pity.
Lisa,
What you have been witnessing and observing in your travels among the youth of today is the world of “entitlement” which many, not all believe is their god given right! These are the same youths who believe that they are entitled to slander, millime or libel anyone they wish on there social networking sites without consequence. Even employers are discovering the harsh realities and challenges of managing the twenty something in the workplace. The core problem is, that these youth were never given boundaries or limitations while growing up primarily because it was much easier for the parents and society to simply give in and avoid any possible conflict. so instead of dealing with these issues and establishing a pattern of appropriate behavior we now have a much more difficult task at hand to correct the problems of the past.