Fragility of Young People
It's Not Their Fault
The other week, I was watching a televised game between City and United when there was a confrontation between the Utd centre forward and Kyle Walker. They went head-to-head and while I’m not naive enough to think they were about to start swinging, there’s always the hope that they might- they didn’t. Instead, Walker, who I suspect would annihilate the Scandi, collapsed and proceeded to lay, very still, holding his face. Kyle remained thus for about twenty seconds and, had you been making a cup of tea and missed the first part, you’d be excused for thinking poor Kyle was dead, or close to it. While there’s nothing new in players ‘diving’ the levels they’ve sunk to earn a victim card and get their opponent- a red one, become evermore embarrassing.
It’s professional sport and a lot of money is at stake. So the victim role at least leads to a logical conclusion. What confounds me, is the gusto with which it’s been embraced in everyday life. It seems to have been most aggressively adopted by those who, on the surface of it, are the least deserving. Namely, young folks, who cling to victimhood like a crackhead to a pipe. Ultimately though, Crack addiction might be less harmful.
Victimhood is the global currency and there’s no shortage of those cashing in. I’m not sure when it took hold but my introduction to it- in its modern pronounced form, came a couple of years ago, whilst stretching in a studio, at the Holborn Gymbox… A young lady, a Personal Trainer, entered and, I swear to God, the following’s verbatim. “I’ve got a class soon?” The question mark’s there because it sounded like a question and, everything she went on to say, sounded like one too. “Oh, OK. What time’s it start?” She informed me '“At nine?” This was at 8.41. Most trainers come in five minutes before class and are fairly relaxed about you getting out. “OK. I’ll just put this back and I’ll be out of your way.” The ‘This’ was a mat and a 32 kg kettlebell. As I stood, she said;
“I’m not being rude to you? You’re being rude to me?”
I was a bit flummoxed by that and again, swear to God, wondered if it was all being filmed for an updated Candid Camera type of outing. Alas, it was all too real;
“How am I being rude?”
She didn’t explain but reiterated that I was ‘being rude’. Unsurprisingly she didn’t last long. Sadly, I can’t envisage that young lady lasting long anywhere or, in anything.
Over the following few years, there have been five subsequent encounters; each has left me in a state of bewilderment, and during each, I was accused of being ‘rude’. Up until yesterday, all my accusers had been female and all, in their early twenties. Yesterday’s incident occurred in the Covent Garden Holland & Barrett where, on asking the young man behind the counter for the whereabouts of a product, he stared at me blankly before proffering up an iPad. Proffering an eye-roll in return, I went in search of the product in question and returned to the counter where I was taken to task for the eye-roll. This, it transpired, he considered ‘rude’. A debate soon ensued.
During it and devoid of any other, he proceeded to play an unusual card- the age one. The Youth Card as it’s known in the game, is a tricky play… According to him, he was too young to be subjected to the horrors of an eye-roll. I suppose I ought to be grateful he didn’t burst into tears. For those reading this, suspecting I’m gilding the lily here, two staff members emerged from the back and apologised for his behaviour.
The common thread running throughout these episodes is that I’ve not been guilty of swearing or being abusive (which would be rude). The fuss, I’ve finally realised, has been down to my ‘tone’. “T’ain’t what you say but the way that you say it. I’m not absolving myself of responsibility as, for example, during one interaction at work, I was told “You don’t know what I’m going through.” I could have resisted but I didn’t. I stoked the fire “Why should I care what you’re going through?” In mitigation, this was someone I’d never met, having a meltdown over the way I’d indicated that she needed to push the door, to open it. She came in angry, stomped out and returned moments later, to let me have it. She certainly pushed the door that time. It escalated rapidly from there and ended with a guy who runs one of the businesses, telling me I’d committed a ‘micro-aggression’… That was a year ago and it’s still a tad frosty between us. Hey-ho…
Look, it’s not as though all this is all water off a duck’s back as it’s quite disturbing having people shouting at you for no apparent reason. Teasing those I know is one thing, antagonising those I don’t, is quite another. I’ve never been overly keen on winding up strangers as I’ve never been overly keen on getting chinned.
After one, particularly confusing episode, I spoke to someone close to me. As she’s something of a Pinko I’d expected chastisement but received sympathy “Oh, I know. They’re a nightmare. It’s Covid.” Her theory is that these youngsters spent a vital year of their development in lockdown, being consumed by introspection. I don’t want to get into a big thing about the lockdowns being right or wrong but there were three in the UK and an entire generation of kids effectively missed a year of their lives and while a year to someone my age isn’t a big deal- to a kid, it’s an eternity. Many of the posts on The Wonder of Me concern life as a teenager and it’s shocking to realise how little time elapsed between one escapade and another. One’s memory suggests that when you were going here and wearing this- you were a different person from when you were still going there and wearing that… As music plays a large part in one’s memories, it serves as a time-stamp. It’s extremely illuminating to look at the hits from a given year and realise two or three months elapsed between the stages that one had presumed, were separated, by years. Time and personal development move rapidly for young folks.
The situation wasn’t helped by the fact that many kids spent much of their time in isolation consuming social (in)justice posts on Tick-Tock and Instagram. Especially the former, which is alleged to be a tool of the CCP and serves only to bring about the demise of Western Civilisation. How much of that is true of course, is debatable. I mean, we appear to be doing a good job of that ourselves without aid from the CCP.
As ever, I digress… As hopelessly fragile as these individuals I’ve encountered are, they’ll be like battle-hardened Nam Vets, compared to what’s in-store. For, what’s about to be unleashed on society are the school system’s current ‘Year Elevens’. These poor fuckers were deprived of not one but two- critical stages of development. Leaving primary school and going into your first year of secondary, are (almost) universal rites of passage. Missing out on leaving one institution, where you’d made it to the top of the food chain, followed by the horror of being back at the bottom- in another, are experiences we’ve all lived through - for generations. All that is, except for the current Year Elevens. So, the gist of this post is, watch your tone folks.