Doesn't anybody respect their elders anymore?

Some young people are so cocky.

You know who I’m talking about. They act as if they’re always right, better than you, smarter or more perceptive or intuitive or fair and balanced or something. Even though they were in diapers when you left college and never knew life before computers, video games, microwaves or remote controls, they posture as if they’re wise beyond their years and deserve to be treated as if they’ve paid their dues when they haven’t.

See?  I was young once.

I don’t know why some people are like this – perhaps it masks insecurity or a lack of self-esteem – but it sure is a turnoff. I’m at that point in life – I’m approaching the Big Five O – where tolerating the arrogance of people half my age has become a bigger challenge than using my Android without reading glasses.

It’s been almost 20 years since I became someone who Timothy Leary wouldn’t have trusted. The first presidential vote I cast was for Ed Clark, the Libertarian candidate who ran against Carter, Reagan and Anderson in 1980. I remember when Big Macs were served in Styrofoam, you could smoke at your desk, and IBM Selectric typewriters were used by secretaries to produce the perfect letter for the boss. I remember when you had to get up off the couch, walk over to the television and turn a dial or push a button to change the channel – of which there were only three or four, depending on the strength of your rabbit ears.

My childhood friends had big sisters who were at Woodstock and big brothers who didn’t come back from Vietnam. I remember feeling afraid because we lived just up Woodward from Motown and there had been a riot, whatever that was, and I was scared that a bullet might come through my front window in Royal Oak and kill my mommy.

I remember going to drive-ins in my pajamas, Apollo 11 landing on the moon, and some guy named Wallace getting shot on TV. “The Brady Bunch,” “Green Acres,” “Mannix” and “Laugh In” weren’t classic television shows when I was a kid; they were the current fare.

I remember being mad at my mom for not letting me see the Rocky Horror Picture Show. When I was 14, I used to sneak onto a car lot not too far from our condo in Birmingham, sit in a big brown Lincoln Mark IV – with its big steel hubcaps and “landau” roof – and pretend it was mine. (Not everything was locked in those days.) I remember Tricky Dick resigning and America’s Bicentennial and Michigan’s Sesquicentennial.

I know there are people out there who turned 30 before I did, and who remember World War II and Korea and Truman and Eisenhower and American Graffiti and JFK getting shot in Dallas. I know there are people who voted for Hubert Humphrey and Gerald Ford and who remember life before television and the Beatles and catalytic converters. I know my elders are wiser than I am – not smarter, maybe, but wiser and more experienced.

I respect my elders. I don’t like ‘em all or kiss their *ss or agree with them all the time but I acknowledge that they have things to offer, wisdom to share. We can be confident about what we can do without dissing those who’ve already done it.

I was probably just as offputtingly arrogant when I had only three decades under my belt. I just don’t remember.