“HARRUMPH! Kids today!” grumbles the Serious Older Gentleman seeing young collegians cavort about without a care in the world.
“What do they know? They have no perspective!”
That used to be the timeless generational cliché, right? Experience plus knowledge equals wisdom — or crotchetiness, or what have you...
Well, it’s the Current Year, as the kids say (circa Stratum XLIV), and what has changed? Everything, yet nothing.
At Café Geherhaus, two young Latté Septoid co-eds furiously scrawl ad-libbed banalities onto posterboard in breathy anticipation of the impending protest against the latest Emmanuel Goldstein.
Across the aisle sits one Johnny Gutts sipping an espresso, watching with wry amusement.
“Aren’t those girls too young to be so bitter about that which they do not know? They’re half my age, abounding in a hurry to signify something. Maybe they should smell the daisies they are afforded in their spoilt station in life — just as I am about to do the same in the station of life I have made for myself.”
Perhaps Mr Gutts is coming off a bit pompous and judgy, but in fact he will be on stage later that evening to perform at a packed concert. No, this is not a ‘Peter Pan Syndrome’ case of extended adolescence, for Gutts has seen the depths and pinnacles of a life appreciated. From the drudgery of gruntwork, $5/day touring per diems and toiling as a Paste-Up Monkey, to the grand zeniths of globe-trotting, meeting heads of state and helming a billion-dollar multi-national corporation, maybe there is some validity to the perspective of Johnny Gutts.
“You know, there’s something wrong when 20-year-olds are the curmudgeons and ‘old-man’ me is the one rocking out, getting chased by women and enjoying the hum of life...”
Don’t stop preaching, Johnny. Don’t stop.
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