Generations

The other day I was at the mall with my mother and my grandmother. We were walking out of the food court on our way to the car. Right when we walked out the door we noticed a middle-aged woman, who was with her mother, waving at us. We looked around confused wondering who knew her, realizing none of us did we politely waved back. The middle-aged woman then proceeded to walk over to us. When she reached us she looked at me and asked “How old is she?”, with a huge smile on her face. At first I was confused as to who “she” was, until I realized she was pointing at my grandmother. I then looked at my mom confused as to why the lady was asking me, and my mom just smiled and answered “83”. The lady then smiled and pointed over to her mother and said “87!”. We just smiled and got into our car, and as we were driving off the woman took her moms arm and started waving and smiling at us. Now once we left, I right away found three things very strange about that situation. The first being; no one I was with knew the lady that had come over to us. Second, what had compelled her to wave over at us to begin with? Third, when she wanted to know my grandmother’s age why hadn’t she just asked my grandmother? This made me start to think about how our cultural treats certain age groups. For example, when you’re a child people will talk down to you in a “cutesy” tone, and maybe take your hand when mom or dad is leaving and wave bye. In your teenage years some middle-aged people could assume you’re sneaky and kind of feel on edge around you. As you start to get older you start earning more respect solely based on your age. Which brings me back to my third thought, why hadn’t the woman just asked my grandmother her own age? In a way, ignoring my grandmother and asking me how old she was, made me think back to whenever I would run into a family. Instead of turning to the two year old child to ask their age I would always ask the parents. So why did this woman see nothing wrong with ignoring my grandmother and treating her as though she was a two year old child, when my grandmother is fully capable of answering questions for herself. What through me off even more however, was that she took her moms hand and waved by to us, just like you would a child. I started to notice a common theme with this. I see daughters or sons talking to their elderly parents, almost like they were children, loud and slow. Our society always tells us to respect our elderly, but do we really mean it? Or do we just hope that when we start to grow old, that saying will help protect our sanity?