Is it dead?
I realize I am an ‘old fart’, but come on. Didn’t your mothers give you kids better fetchings than this?
I don’t mean I expect to see young men taking off their overcoats (they don’t wear overcoats anyway) and lying them across puddles for women to walk upon so they don’t get their feet wet, but good God. Some basic common courtesy for their elders seems to be totally lacking.
I speak of the young 20 and 30 somethings that ride the shuttle and the train every day. That afternoon return shuttle is packed, and there are a lot of old ladies, close to retirement age or better, that end up standing because all the seats are taken by the time the shuttle gets to their stop, and there those young boys are, sitting there chatting up the cute intern sitting next to them, talking on their cellphones, or playing games on them, or with their earbuds stuck in their ears listening to their ipods, oblivious to the old women with the varicose veins and creaking hips that have to hang on to a rail overhead for dear life with their arthritic fingers while the driver dreams of Talladega as he makes his way around the curves.
There’s even a lady that I know must be a cancer patient that ends up standing. Her hair is just growing back in, and she has that chemo pallor about her. You know she must have days when she feels weak and sick, and it’s all she can do to make it through a workday, yet these kids seem to be totally ignorant of the condition of the other passengers around them.
They behave the exact same way on the train platform. Taking up the space on the (too sparse) benches in the shelters. Christ on a Keebler saltine, young man, scoot the eff over, at least! Put your damn laptop case on the freaking ground at your feet and let that lady have a place to sit!
They’re rude on the train as well. Normally there’s enough seating for everyone, but there has been the rare occasion that it is standing room only. Same thing. Those kids sit on their asses while the older ladies stand and endure the ride, some in their heels.
I want to reach over and smack the holy living shit out of them and say ‘Get up off your inconsiderate ass and give this woman a seat - she’s your grandmother’s age, ffs… would you let grandma ride like this? You wanna impress that little piece of fluff you’re chatting up? Get up and show her you have the manners I KNOW your mother taught you, you little heathen!’
I always said I’d be Weezer from Steel Magnolias when I got old.
Looks like my thoughts, at least, have a good start on it.
