I was chasing envy when I jumped aboard the monorail. Mr. Husband had been making memories with Alexis all over Disney World while I worked, and I was ready to get in on some that memory-making myself. Just as the ever present voice began to belt out, "por favor manténgase alejado de las puertas," a herd of teenage girls boarded the monorail.
As I squished into a corner to make room for the herd, I instinctively rolled my eyes. I had just heard an interesting-to-me statistic during the closing keynote of my conference, and there it was live and in person. In the 1960s 10-12% of people said they were "significant people" when polled. Now that statistic is closer to 90%. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, there's no denying that the quarterlife crisis is a real thing. Those girls are on the brink of discovering that they aren't as important as they believe. I hope somebody give them some floaties and helmets so that they survive the fall mostly intact.
I clutched the pole as the monorail began to move, not so much as to keep my balance but because I had just had the thought that some day I'm going to have one of those creatures of my own. A teenage girl. In my house. You all weren't there to hold me, so I had to depend on the pole to keep me from falling over dead with dread. Not helping: my eventual teenage girl creature will have friends like those teenage girl creatures.
ACK. ACK. ACK.
One of the girls, a tall brunette wearing shorts that would make Daisy Duke blush and a t-shirt that loudly proclaimed the name of her high school, started to tell her friends a story. She told them about how the previous night she and another group had been on the monorail leaving the Magic Kingdom when they had noticed a man. And "OMG, he was all by himself. How weird is that?"
I stood there on the monorail all alone. I guess I'm weird, too.
She continued on with her story, adding in the detail that the man was sitting on the monorail eating popcorn. Oh, and he was "Soooo creepy."
By that point in the story I felt like I was on a first name basis with Britney as she continued telling her tale. She had been using the pole like a stripper pole, dancing and generally having a great time, as another of her friends (Mandy, in case you were curious) took pictures with her phone. She described a raucous good time, a little bit of flirtatious crazy in the midst of the Rat's favorite mode of transportation.
I smiled a bit at the image because, really, who hasn't looked at those monorail poles and pictured Demi Moore swinging around with Def Leppard blaring in the background? But then she added in that Creepy Popcorn Guy just sat in that seat and kept eating his popcorn as she danced and her friend took pictures. A hefty dose of Judgy McJudgerton Speak dropped out of her mouth as she proclaimed him creepy and odd and generally a giant loser.
And I thought, when exactly did this happen? When did a guy sitting alone on a monorail eating popcorn become unacceptable while a teenage girl pole-dancing and letting a friend take her picture became The Norm?
Just get off my lawn, whippersnappers.
