Old vs. Young

I had two large tour groups yesterday and today. Yesterday's group was 40+ seniors that were split between myself and another tour guide; today's group was 20+ high school students. Now we all "know" what high school kids are like: rude, noisy, insolent, disrespectful, inconsiderate, blah, blah, blah. Anyone care to take a wild guess at which group caused the most problems? I'll give you a hint: it wasn't the rude, noisy, insolent, disrespectful, inconsiderate high school students who in the 3+ hours I was with them managed to be none of those things. When it was time for them to pile back onto their buses, every last one thanked me for the tour.

Now the old people on the other hand were, with rare exceptions, a total pain in the butt. I don't think I ever finished a sentence in the entire hour-and-a-half without being interrupted by someone else asking their question, which in most cases was the exact same question I was already trying to answer. Whining, griping, complaining about everything from the wind to the fact that they actually had to walk the tour, was the order of the day. At the end, I had exactly six people that thanked me for the tour. The only consolation was that those half-dozen seemed genuinely embarrassed by the behavior of the rest of the group.

The next time I hear some old fart complaining about "kids these days" it will be hard to not shoot back a "back at ya, gramps." Of course we all know that would just make me another one of those rude, disrespectful, inconsiderate kids.