INTERLUDE (3) - A NATION OF CHILDREN

Very few people seem to want to grow old gracefully any more. In fact, very few people seem to want to admit to getting any older at all these days. Most people seem to want to dress and act like their own children and seem positively flattered to be mistaken for brothers and sisters instead of the parents that they ought to be.

In fact, sometimes, although not often, the kids you see seem to act with far more maturity than the adults who are supposedly responsible for looking after them.

We seem to have created, or even become, a generation that has never quite escaped from playing games, acting like teenagers, and having strops when we don’t get our own way, and seem to refuse to act like adults whilst screaming the whole “Look at me… ME… ME!!!” bit, long after it is really dignified to do so.

And, like many other things that are not necessarily to the benefit of our culture, we seem to have imported this particular “Youth obsessed, never wanting to grow up” trait from the “Good Ol’ U.S. of A” and it doesn’t seem likely that, now that it has its grip on us, it’s ever going to let us go.

There were moments during my trip when I really felt like I was wandering about in a nation full of children, with twittering Americans finding everything to be a fuss or a bother, whilst they implied that their obsession with “naughty” things like drinking, or having sex, were somehow more than a little bit daring, but still they had to shout about it constantly like adolescents wondering whether they could shock any of the grown ups who might be listening.

But, unfortunately, there don’t actually seem to be any grown ups around any more in a country where the height of aspiration sometimes appears to be a big screen TV, or where a shot of tequila is SO VERY EXCITING…!!!

Yes, they do sometimes appear to give the impression of being a nation of children who always want to get their own way and will and complain whenever they don’t, or have selfish tantrums when somebody else seems to be getting something that they’re not, and who still make a point about having their “stuff” around them, because that somehow makes them feel more secure.

If you’ve ever travelled on a Domestic flight over there, you’ll perhaps know precisely what I mean when “luggage limits” seem to refer to “just how much of your stuff can you carry?”

But if there is a problem then it’s always everyone else’s fault and the toddler tantrums get louder and louder, only to be ended by telling someone else what their job is because, like all stroppy kids, they always know better.

I was sitting in a booth in a diner one morning when one particularly fine example walked in, sat himself down and set up his laptop, making loud enquiries about the Wi-Fi, demanding his coffee, wanting to know about where the bathroom was and generally being the sort of person whom the entire staff suddenly have to run around after simply because he was the centre of his very own universe and had obviously decided that his needs were far more important than anybody else’s could possibly be.

More fuss and bother followed as he made very specific demands of his breakfast order, but the real tantrums began when his food was delivered and there was something amiss with what arrived for him.

It was as if the world was about to end, or he was going to bring about the apocalypse, such was his rage and contempt for the server who had so obviously and incompetently made a mistake, or not heard, or not understood.

How on earth could she have got it so very wrong and dared to present him with something that was not exactly as he had requested…? Did she not know her job…? Was she just plain stupid…? Did she not realize just how utterly ruined his entire day now was simply because of her utter incompetence…?

I, of course, would have gobbed into his food if it had been me bringing the replacement meal a few minutes later, perhaps because I know that I’m not a grown up either, but the one rule of catering that I ever learned was to never annoy the person who is serving up your food to you, because that’s where the true power lies.

I wonder if he was perhaps just trying to get a freebie like the rude nasty little kid that he still obviously was…?

After all, getting something for nothing does occasionally seem to be part of the American Dream…

Anyway, there’s a lot of people like that around these days, in all manner of situations and circumstances, and not just in the United States, either, and sometimes I think that the whole ruddy lot of them (and us) need to be made to stand on the Naughty Step and have a jolly good think about the sort of people they are.

Or maybe we all just need to grow up…