The privileges of the old.

In Asian societies, traditionally, the old are looked up to - even when they are very short, if you know what I mean. However, do they always deserve this automatic respect? Two days ago, I encountered someone that made me think otherwise.

I was in the queue to get on the morning bus, there being three people in front of me and quite a few behind. Suddenly, someone elbowed me to the left, pushing me to one side, as they thrust forward. I turned to see who it was: to my surprise my eyes alighted on a very elderly woman of, I estimate somewhere between 85 and 95 years old. She looked very fit and spry - but there was something fierce and cold in her face. She didn't look to be a "nice old lady" at all.

I wasn't the only person she pushed out of the way. She pushed past all three people ahead of me, to the front of the queue. All who saw what she had done stared at her - but no-one spoke out. Perhaps they were all mentally making "allowances for her age". Well, I really don't think that any allowance should be made. It was a very simple matter of a rude, ill-mannered, uncouth person who just happened to be elderly.

In the whole incident, the old Chinese lady didn't say a word. She just held her fierce, dark expression on her face and kind of dared anyone to challenge her.

The event had rather an effect on me. Why, I wondered, should such behaviour be allowed, by all in the queue, simply because she was old? What she was doing broke all the social rules - and it wasn't as if she was frail, or anything: she was fit, aggressive and had physically pushed everyone out of the way. Here was an elderly person abusing her status as an old person. She was taking advantage of the Asian tendency to revere the old - to actually misbehave. I wasn't impressed. Her action made me reflect that, perhaps the elderly don't deserve the respect they are automatically given. They don't, necessarily, deserve any more respect than anyone else. They are, most definitely, not certain to be any better than anyone else - and therefore not deserving of a different attitude towards them.

Then again, I wondered, sometime later: what kind of life made this old lady so fierce, so aggressive and so unpleasant to her fellow man? Perhaps far from respecting her, we should pity her the kind of life that engenders the kind of attitude she showed. Surely, there was something wrong with her.

However, her age did save her from my rebuke. Had she been younger, I would have remonstrated with her for the elbow and insisted on her return to the back of the queue. The sight of her silver hair shocked me into silence. I was too busy being surprised to actually do anything about her rudeness.

The next time, however, I would probably speak up - and resist - for it wouldn't be a surprise anymore. It would just be one more rude elderly person who should know better.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and seven months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, five years exactly, and Tiarnan, twenty-eight months, please go to:http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind.

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