When I retired, I went back to school to get an MFA. I was thrilled to be accepted and part of a cohort with people the age of my children and grandchildren. The program went well, until one evening, when it was my turn to have my non-fiction story about my twenty-eight years as a visiting nurse critiqued by the class. I wrote about the first sisters of Providence, who served the mountain men and native peoples of the Rockies. I was shocked when several twenty somethings insulted my character. “How,” one said with furrowed brow, could I use the word “served” in relation to indigenous peoples?
I’d written about being surrounded by a pack of dogs with “murderous” eyes. One of them ran at me and bit the back of my leg. “It’s callus and uncaring to say a dog has murderous eyes,” a young woman said with feeling.
This was new territory, seemingly inoffensive words that had become taboo. I couldn’t possibly know what they all were, and worried I would make more unwitting mistakes. The inference was that the young people were more evolved, more caring than me.
I asked the professor why my innocuous words had caused such a ruckus, and he said, “Well, it’s generational.” What did that mean? I was raised to respect my elders, to have a strong work ethic, to treat all people as I want to be treated. I had to fight hard to win and suck it up when my bell bottoms caught in my bike chain and threw me over the handlebars onto the tarmac. The nicest thing anyone ever said to me was, “If I had to go to war, I’d want to go with you,” and occasionally, I have to ask a young person a technology question, because they have grown up with machines and I haven’t. That’s when they call me, “hon.”
Our research librarian told us that the 2023 freshman class could not read cursive. Schools have stopped teaching it. That fact does not make me feel superior. It’s sad that a beautiful form of communication is becoming obsolete. The truth is, life experience is its own master’s degree, and so young people filled with righteous indignation, or smug superiority, are not more evolved, or intrinsically smarter than us. Many have yet to learn that true caring takes action, not just words.
Kirstie Clinkor
