Generation Gap?

Generation Gap?

 

A couple of days ago, I was having lunch in a “family” type pub restaurant, one of a national chain, serving all day, which caters for volume and those seeking good value. I go there from time to time, and enjoy it, often turning up during the quieter period (after lunch, but before the evening crowd arrive).

 

Anyway, there I was, a couple of days ago having lunch with the missus on a particularly nice table for two overlooking a pond.

 

Perhaps oddly, we’d had exactly the same table a couple of weeks previously, and on that occasion my lunch had been slightly “dented” by the badly controlled kid on the table behind me, a puffy-faced tyke roughly 7 years old, at a guess, who’s idea of going out for a meal was to constantly fill a salad plate, plus his “never-ending” fizzy cola, and to see how many rolls he could balance on a small side plate. In other words, all the “help yourself to as many as you want” items.

 

His mum wasn’t bothered, in fact, she openly encouraged him by laughing at the piles of excess that he bought back to the table, and didn’t consume.

 

However, the thing that really annoyed me was the determined shove in the back, and the treading on my coat as he passed. Had it been me, (an adult of considerably greater size than “Little Johnny”) I would have been able to pass his chair without him even knowing. Just good manners, apart from anything else.

 

Had I been a wizard or Genie I’d have cast a suitable spell that brought realisation to the kid and maybe helped his future prospects. Turned him to a Pig or similar! (only for a bit!).

 

Which brings me neatly back to yesterday, wife and I sitting at the aforementioned table, enjoying our meal, watching the goldfish, when again, I was barged in the back by a kid on the table behind. This time, the culprit was a snooty-faced blonde girl of about six or seven in a blue school uniform, a little bigger than I remember “Little Johnny” had been, but no less active or annoying. From her expression she’d been told that she could do no wrong, and again her mum did nothing to correct her as she jogged backwards and forwards collecting fizzy drinks, and bread like a squirrel stocking for a cold winter.

 

What a difference there is between children these days, and what a difference between parents.

 

When I went to school, whatever our background, whoever we were, we were moulded as one, generally by a seriously outnumbered teacher, but despite this, discipline was enforced. Any thought that we could do as we liked was soon dashed, whilst we also learnt respect for elders.

 

The reduction of convention over the years (rightly so, in my opinion) has meant that everyone these days is able to pick and choose for themselves. Unfortunately, we haven’t really addressed the fact that with greater freedom you need greater individual responsibility.

 

As for manners…….