Attitude Is Ageless

If there is one thing the octogenarians all over the world have it common, it is that they love to complain about the youth of today. It doesn't matter their country of origin, they can't wait to give you their unprompted opinion on how kids today are just too self-involved and could learn a thing or two from their generation. And, on the whole, I would tend to agree with them. I not only think that some kids today are rude, I find some of them to be crazy-rude. However, I often wonder if it isn't that they are ruder, it is just that we are more aware of it because we are more aware of everything these days. Teenagers might have always been rude by nature, but you only had to deal with a few at one time. Thanks to the internet it could be that we're just exposed to more of them at one time, which makes it seem as though it has never been this bad. After all, you don't have to look much further than your typical social networking site to understand why it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if some teenagers were given a slap to the back of the head and got knocked down a peg or two. However, I contend you could very easily make the same case for any number of people of all ages. Just today I was given two quick reminders that people can be rude at any age.

The first one occurred as I was driving down the street to do a quick bit of business. I passed a woman dragging a young girl in one hand and a dog on a leash in the other. I couldn't tell if she was annoyed or oblivious, but both the girl and the dog were having trouble keeping up. The dog was having an especially hard time because it had to go to the bathroom. I know this because for the 20 seconds it was in my line of sight I saw the dog twice try to run far enough ahead of the woman to create a window where it could pop a squat. When those didn't work it ended up dropping its poop dead-center of the sidewalk in mid-stride. Not only did the woman not stop to pick up her dog's deposit, she didn't even break stride as she continued down the street, pretending not to know her dog just took a human-sized dookie on the sidewalk. Now, I'm well aware that cleaning up after your dog is the biggest drawback to owning one, because it is not like you can ever get them to potty-train. Also, if you indulge your dog every time it stops to smell something your walks will take hours, which means at some point you just have to pull them along. However, this woman had to know her dog wasn't smelling everything just to pass the time and had to go. And just because it is not fun to pick up a poop doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I mean, everyone has to use that sidewalk and there is supposed to be some kind of social contract. This woman was definitely old enough to know better.

My second example happened less than 10 minutes later. After concluding my business I was heading back to my car at the exact same time as the woman in the car parked next to mine was getting to her vehicle. Since she was moving a little slower I figured I would get out of her way as quickly as possible and hopped into my car. I had just turned the key in the ignition when I heard a loud thud on my passenger-side door. I turned my head to see that this woman had swung her car door open so far that she had hit my truck. Now, despite our best efforts, I think we have all accidentally done this at one time or another. In fact, it was probably just bad luck for the woman that I happened to be in my vehicle at the time. So, I was willing to be sympathetic. However, her reaction was what was rude. Had she given me a concerned look and mouthed 'sorry' I would have completely dismissed it, because it is not like she dented my door. However, she didn't do that, as she looked much more concerned for her door than for mine. Then, after first trying to avoid eye contact, she shot me the dirtiest look, as if it was somehow my fault that my car had been within swinging distance and I should have known better. I know it is human nature to go on the attack when you can't think of a good defense, but you can't run into an inanimate object that was already there and then blame the object. Even a teenager wouldn't try that move.

The simple truth is that how rude a person is has nothing to do with their age and everything to do with how they were raised. If you are allowed to be rude as a kid you will be rude as an adult. The only difference is that when humans are rude as kids they seem more obnoxious because the rest of society doesn't think they have earned that right just yet. We'll give more slack to someone older because we assume they have had some kind of experience which has made them that way, which isn't always the case. If anything it should be the opposite reaction, because there is still time to turn those kids around. There is nothing sweeter than a sweet old lady, but nothing worse than a grumpy old man. Our elderly citizens can actually be even more obnoxious than the children, because they have been this way for even longer and have almost forgotten how to be nice. The only difference is that people just don't have the stomach to call them on it, because no one wants to get caught yelling at an elderly person. It doesn't matter what they said to provoke you, you will look like the bad guy to anyone arriving on the scene, so you keep your mouth shut. Lucky for them, at least one person involved was raised correctly, so thank your parents for that.