Have it your way

[austin_dern]

I don't go very often to the Burger King that's nearest my home, for a few reasons. I usually eat fast food on the weekends when I also do recreational shopping that takes me a few miles farther. The shop seems to have minor problems with tricky parts of orders like ``with cheese, no mayo''. And then there was a stretch of a couple visits where the Diet Coke dispenser had consistently flat soda. Every soda fountain spends some time flat, but too much of that makes a place unappealing. Add in a failure to have ice twice in a row (so it was warm enough to need ice which was thus impossible) and I can mark the place down.

And there's one other thing. The place turned into, for whatever reason, a pretty big teen hangout. I don't want to sound like those cranky elderly people upset about lawns of various existence, because I'm not, really. I don't mind most of what teens do and the lawn isn't even mine. But I do suppose that teens today are, like those since the basic model was invented (1941), prone to doing foolish things loudly, and by myself I prefer to eat in reasonable quiet and without distraction. If they want to see whether they can use food trays to skateboard along the planter walls before a manager catches them, that's fine, and I'll leave them their space.

But I gave the place a try, and while they had modest confusion regarding my order (the cashier asked for it several times after the back-room folks insisted it was done), the soda was suitably fizzy and cold, and while there were two packs of semi-associated teens all seemed respectable enough. And then I overheard a girl describing a phone conversation. She had been upset at the caller because she ``was chugging bottles of water to go peeing on a car later'', and she was concentrating her squatting on the seat so as to save her urine for its intended purpose.

I worked diligently to not hear the rest of this. So I do not know if she was speaking of a new trend in inappropriately placed urine, or if she was speaking sarcastically to a person who would not get off the phone long enough for her to tend her business. I don't want to know. But I think I will give the teens their space, and that I am not being being too curmudgeonly.

Trivia: After the bombings at Pearl Harbor, the United States's B-17s at Luzon, Philippines, were ordered into the air to avoid being caught on the ground. They finally landed about 11:30 local time to prepare for a delayed strike on Japanese forces in Formosa, when the Japanese air forces based in Formosa, delayed by fog, arrived. Source: History Of The Second World War, B H Liddell Hart.

Currently Reading: The Mightiest Machine, John W Campbell. This 1972 reprinting from Ace features a cover note, ``Science Fiction From The Great Years'', by which they mean, when you didn't need to have the restrained tones or closely observed realism of E E `Doc' Smith.

Comments

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

I don't want to sound like those cranky elderly people upset about lawns of various existence...

heheh... it starts. I felt like that proverbial crank when I had to chase the kids off the library property when they were skateboarding down the granite walls, 'grinding' the edges of the steps and rails, and otherwise being loud and offensive to the point of bullying patrons trying to enter the building.

It's comical, in a weird little way, that they also spend time on the Children's room computers running reams of paper printing this
http://images.easyart.com/i/prints/lg/7/1/71131.jpg


I worked diligently to not hear the rest of this.

Nice image. The harder you try, the more clear the words come through.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Hey, now, I didn't say anything to her or her friends, or even look in their direction, and I didn't try to impose my reaction on their social space. They can skateboard these metaphorical granite walls all they want; I just choose not to be in their unwitting audience.

Oddly, there were a few of the larger subway stations in Singapore which did have no-skateboarding signs, although there were teens carrying skateboards, which was not riding.

I was actually pretty successful ignoring the rest of her conversation. I'm pretty good focusing on words in print when I want to be.