In a Congressional hearing this week, the postmaster general got into a heated argument with one of our Congressmen from Georgia. The argument culminated in the postmaster general taking a page from my six-year-old’s playbook. He covered his ears with his hands.
Yes, you read that correctly. This grown adult put his hands over his ears so he wouldn’t have to listen to criticism.
I was not aware that once one graduated kindergarten this was still an option. You mean to tell me I could have deployed this tactic back when I had to sit through meetings that should have been emails where people who really liked meetings just asked me the same ill-informed questions every Thursday?
Anyway, the postmaster acting childish is just the tip of the iceberg. If you observe the world around you for any length of time you’ll notice a growing trend of adults acting less mature than kindergarteners. I realize there was a book called “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,” but I’m sure the author of that book didn’t intend for us to take it literally.
We’re not talking about young adults here either. Collectively, the older among us appear to have lost their damn minds. The postmaster general is 67 years old. I’m not sure what age one is considered to be “old enough to know better,” but I’m pretty sure it is somewhere in the vicinity of 35.
Let’s slowly back away from public officials though and look at every day Americans. In June a 66-year old man from Tallapoosa pleaded guilty to having a little road rage. It seems that what started as an argument with another driver escalated into the Georgia gentleman ramming the other driver with his car. Is this how grown ups solve problems? My kids would like to know.
In February, a 63-year-old from Acworth got 10 years behind bars for his road rage incident because he chose to fire 14 rounds into the driver’s side of another car while stopped at a red light. In this case, the Cherokee County District Attorney said it best. “This is not how a civilized society behaves.” And yet, how many times do we read about or witness road rage?
Back when I was but a child trying to figure out the adult world, my father was president of a local little league ballpark. I was shocked by the number of times he had to expel a parent for laying the smackdown on an umpire. Back then, I thought it was just isolated rednecks with substandard IQs, but as I have gotten older I’m noticing more adults than I’m comfortable with resort to verbal abuse or outright violence over issues that they should have learned to resolve on a playground back in elementary school.
But it isn’t always the extreme cases that make the news that that I’m talking about. In the last decade or so of living in suburbia I have witnessed a treasure trove of childish behavior from people who really should be old enough to know better.
I’ve seen women take selfies at parties with the sole intention of posting them on facebook to make the drama queen down the street feel left out. I’ve watched grown men yell at women in threatening ways over how they parked their cars. And how many infamous “Karens” have we watched try to get some poor waitress or retail worker fired simply because they disagreed with store policy, didn’t feel they were addressed properly, or because they came down with a bad case of “do you know who I am” syndrome?
Our children are watching. Our children are watching how we treat others and it will determine how they treat others. Want to know why there’s so much bullying going on in schools? Look at the bullying going on between adults in your cul de sac. Witness the cattiness of most adults and the petty ways in which we often conduct ourselves.
Some of you don’t remember the valuable lessons your kindergarten teachers taught you and it shows. So, as someone who is married to a former kindergarten teacher, I’d like to reiterate some of those lessons.
Share with your neighbors. This includes people on the road. The roads are our shared property, much like the blocks in kindergarten. We don’t throw tantrums just because we don’t like how someone else is using the shared property, even if the other person is breaking the rules.
Similarly, if you hear that there is some sort of crisis coming and you have plenty of a commodity like toilet paper, see if your neighbor has some instead of going to the store and hoarding it all. It’s called decency.
Don’t hit. You’ve been hearing this since you were five. If you’re still solving your problems with violence, you need to sit in a corner, take five deep breaths and then call a therapist.
Don’t talk out of turn. If it is someone else’s turn to talk, let them speak and for the love of God don’t cover your ears just because you have to listen to someone. This also applies to opinions. If you don’t know about a topic, just stay out of it. We’ll all be happier that way.
Respect others. I know it is hard when you have those big feelings to treat other people as human beings, but let’s put our listening ears on for a moment, okay? Think about how it makes you look when you go around having a nutty, being selfish and doing things to intentionally hurt people or make them feel less than human. That’s right friend, it shows others that you don’t respect yourself and that you aren’t someone they should respect. You want other people to respect you, right, friend? You want other people to listen to you when you’re upset because the shopkeeper wouldn’t take your coupon that expired in 2003, right? Then you need to listen to others and show them respect, too.
Back in the day, adulthood meant civility. Responsibility. Probably owning a sensible pair of loafers. But lately, it feels like a critical mass of humanity has collectively decided, “What if, instead, we didn’t?”
Look around your neighborhood. Every parking confrontation, every HOA meeting meltdown, every viral video of someone berating a Starbucks barista over almond milk— these aren’t outliers. They’re symptoms. Symptoms of a society where the default conflict resolution method is escalate until someone cries or calls the cops. You’d think with all the emotional growth we’re capable of, we could handle disputes without someone getting beaned with a can of LaCroix. But no.
You see it on the road — 40-somethings acting like Mario Kart was a driving tutorial. You see it in retail stores — grown adults demanding the firing of a teenager. And worst of all, you see it on social media, where passive-aggressive Facebook posts about who wasn’t invited to brunch or some form of public shaming are as common as minivans in suburbia.
And where are the actual kids during all this? Watching. Learning. Wondering why we told them to act their age when we are the ones acting their age.
So let’s try something radical. Let’s be decent. Let’s resolve disagreements with words instead of weapons. Let’s stop treating service workers like punching bags. And let’s—if it’s not too much to ask—resist the urge to reenact The Hunger Games every time someone takes the last pack of Charmin at Costco.
B.T. Clark
B.T. Clark is an award-winning journalist and the Publisher of The Georgia Sun. He has 25 years of experience in journalism and served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta for 15 years and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc. for 8 years. His work has appeared in several newspapers throughout the state including Neighbor Newspapers, The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal. He is a Georgia native and a fifth-generation Georgian.
