PSA: Respect The Young Folk

I will never understand how as people get older and multiply, they lose their social awareness of how obnoxious they are. If I am somewhere alone, I am probably not making any noise, hence I don’t want to hear talking, and chances are, I have deliberately positioned myself so I would be in a place where there is no talking. I am not referring to public transportation or bustling restaurants. I am talking about at the park or at the beach or any other communal place with more than enough room to spread out. So why is it that after I have staked out a specifically wide-open and vacant spot to relax, you and your brood of six with three under five years of age, choose to set up camp literally inches from me? Pay no mind to the fact that I am trying to enjoy my 84 degrees and sunny day with a book outside. Is a book not a non-verbal cue that I would like to enjoy the QUIET? 

I don’t want to hear you call each of your children’s names 7 times in a row as opposed to getting your lazy ass up to get them. I have no interest in having a brief heart attack every time your ADHD nine-year-old catapults himself into a flip inches from my face. I don’t want to know why your kid doesn’t like celery or why you feel inclined to go through every vegetable to surmise which ones he does. I can live without involuntarily overhearing you explain ROTFL to your mother or be embarrassed for you in leu of your ridiculous conversations with your dog. That is annoying. If I can get off the phone when I check out of Trader Joe’s you can zip it or move it. If I can watch my language when children are present, you can check your volume and location in respect to me. Unless you are Dane Cook and you want to put on a personal comedy show for me, I don’t want to hear you. Have some respect people, you chose to have kids, I did not. And perhaps you should get your eyes checked with respect to the signs of dementia and lacking of appropriate spacial proximity. 

I think we’ve got respecting the elderly down pat, how about respecting the young adults? We are young, broke and fabulous, angsty as ever, and we don’t need your constant babble interrupting our deliberate choice for solitude. We have no time for being subjected to an audio visual of your life. We have bigger fish to fry, like mauling over once more who we are and what the hell we are doing.