A Letter to Those Older
This letter gracefully succeeds in showing some of the more prominent faults of my character. Pride, the most obvious, and how obviously it is quick to take offense. Nowadays, we hear much about the ideas of having pride in oneself, particularly in one’s identity. The one I most proudly identify as is youth. I’m not even a teenager anymore, so maybe I should know better than to write this but being, embarrassingly enough, in denial about aging, I simply cannot help but to be offended when my age becomes scrutinized in the manner illustrated later. From that well of inspiration was born this here exercise in bitching and moaning.
I do, in appropriate circumstances, enjoy arguing about views on life or dissecting what behavior is moral and what isn’t. Generally, these appropriate circumstances are somewhere between one and three-and-a-half beers. People close to my age generally agree with me on most all things, and thus I at times I’m drawn to people older than I. They challenge me in my thinking, resulting in a discourse more fruitful, for we (are likely to) disagree on many things. Discourse more entertaining, at least, if not fruitful. Recently though, I talked to someone a few decades beyond me about something or other and heard a certain phrase fall from their lips. It wasn’t the first time it’s been said to me, nor will it be the last, but it was a phrase of disrespect potent enough to deter me from talking to this person any longer; a phrase so damning, so revealing of their weak character all ethos of the speaker disappeared; a sequence of six words equal to spitting in my face; an insult simply begging me to turn and walk away. Or sit at home writing a dry rant about it.
They had the audacity to say: “You’ll understand when you are older.”
That boils my piss.
First of all, how dare you?
The reason why hearing those words sucks so hard is this: it’s true. We all know it is. Why are you wasting everybody’s time? Obviously, opinions will change with age. Experience transforms views. Knowledge reshapes thinking. But in this moment, I am attempting to communicate how I view things and how I think at the age I currently am, based on things I’ve observed and things that have happened to me. I am communicating as if my words carry the truth, for I can only communicate my reality. To what end are you telling me “I’ll understand?” If you don’t want to talk to me, you can say it with your full chest. Have some integrity.
Second, with those nasty six words you effectively invalidate anything I have to say, even outside of the current subject. You’re simultaneously implying your hypothetical religion is correct, and my hypothetical one isn’t, for I am young. The utter dismissive nature of that phrase is adequately enough expressed by this real, rule-abiding syllogism:
At this moment in time, I don’t like ice cream.
When I am forty-eight, I might be losing sleep because of how I love ice cream.
What? Lol why are you talking about scoopable frozen dessert items like you know what they are, you dumb kid? That’s embarrassing. When I was your age, I skied to school in blizzards.
Why should I talk to you about anything, since my youth, makes my words carry no weight?
Third, why won’t you, since you have the blessing of age, the wonderous wisdom of years, share what happened to you? Based on this, this, and this, you now feel this way about a subject, instead of patronizing me? Why elect to murder a conversation over sharing the wealth of knowledge? I promise, telling me how “I’ll understand when I’m older” does not make you look any smarter. It might even, in fact, be quite counterproductive in that sense. Why escape dialogue with a rude sentence to sit in a hotsy-totsy ivory tower? Share mistakes you’ve made, so I’m not doomed to repeat them. Educate me on the subject, so I won’t embarrass myself in the future.
When that appalling phrase is uttered to me, I will find other company: company that won’t hold me to a low standard due to my age. If that reaction, or this article, seem extreme or petty, disrespect demands disrespect, for the echo is a phenomenon found in nature. If that reaction, or this article, seem irrational or unwarranted, perhaps you’d understand if you were young.
So, allow me to express, as eloquently as I can and in vernacular I feel is expected of me: goo goo gaa gaa.
Yours,
thin skin
