Entitlement
English

Entitlement

by

daily life

Today, my brother's in-laws visited my parents. We talked about lots of stuff, then the discussion switched to the topic of public transport. The mother-in-law, Larisa, remembered something that happened to her once.

She was on a bus. It was almost empty except for this guy. Then a woman with a four-year-old child got on. The child was crying and screaming about how he wanted to sit by the window. Larisa couldn't understand what his problem was. Then the woman approached her and asked, "Would you mind? My child wants to sit there." Larisa refused, saying that they could take any other seat on the empty bus. The woman started screaming and guilt-tripping Larisa, saying, "He's just a kid! How could you?!"... blah-blah-blah. The man then spoke up, "Lady, what are you doing? Are you purposely trying to raise a spoiled brat?" That finally made that woman fuck off. She retreated, grumbling to her son, "You see how bad that woman is!"

I jokingly said, "I think I've seen what kids like that grow into!" Then I told a story of my own.

I was taking a bus to another town. It's a 2.5-hour ride. The bus was half-empty, so I took a seat almost all the way in the back and I reclined my seat since there was nobody behind me. I'm tall, so sitting in those bus seats is often very uncomfortable. It's straight up painful when someone reclines on you, hitting you in the knees, so knowing that, I almost never recline my seat. At a bus stop, an old lady and a teenager got on the bus. They chose to sit behind me for some reason, even though there were other seats available. So the kid asks, "Could you please raise your seat? My mother wants to sit by the window." Even though they were polite, I said no. I didn't think I should sacrifice my comfort for their whim. It's not like they were struggling — they had a lot of options, but they chose the only seat they could that would disturb me. I pointed out that there were other seats empty, and the kid was like, "But my mom wants this seat! Have a heart!" Yeah, sorry, I don't think I will have a heart, even if it makes me a bad person in your eyes.

We're taught to respect our elders, but I think respect has its limits.

Headline image by anniespratt on Unsplash

2