Missives and Musing: Being Young

Why is it that young people are treated like second class citizens in this society. I have many examples of how older people treat young "naive" people

Last week my sister and I went on spring break vacation in Florida. We stayed at our grandparents condo run by Wyndham resorts. Since we were in Orlando we had to make an appearance at the Disney Theme Parks and our resort offered a shuttle to the parks for $11 per person and it was a round trip. The first day we arrived at the front of our resort at 8:15 for the 8:30 shuttle. The shuttle did not arrive until 8:45. That evening we were the first to be picked up and the last to be dropped off which in total was a two hour long drive. The following morning we were at the front waiting for our shuttle at 8:20 and at around 9:00 when the shuttle still had not arrived I went in the the lobby and asked that the front desk call and ask what was taking so long. They did and found out that the shuttle had apparently come and gone and that they would send a cab for the same fair as the shuttle. When the cab arrived the driver implied that we were late and had missed the shuttle. He continued to make jokes that we were two young girls and hadn't made it on time because we took too long to get ready, or that we didn't know that the time was different here than it was in Iowa, etc. When we arrived at the Disney property we were told that we needed to pay $15 to enter the park in the cab. The driver than laughed and said "he figured we knew that" In the end we payed double for the cab than we would've payed had the shuttle came on time.

This past year I have been living in Towerview Apartments here in Maryville and have had many many problems with my landlord whether it be things breaking and not being fixed or things not ever working but my main issue with him, and pretty much all landlords, is that he speaks to me like I'm a dumb kid who doesn't know what she's doing. I don't know if this is because I'm young or because I'm a girl. When I ask my landlord a question I expect a straight forward answer not for him to laugh at me and give me a condescending answer. On top of that when people "promise" that something will get accomplished I actually expect that it will get done. But I feel like they think I forget they promised something. I didn't forget.

Finally. I will be moving from Maryville to Kansas City this summer and going to school there. Last month my roommate and I went to visit a town house in Gladstone, MO. Now for the record we did our research we looked at the website of this complex many times and had called around to multiple places. When we arrived we were quite disappointed with the location and the inside. The women who was showing the apartment treated myself and my roommate like we were naive and stupid and had not done our homework. Basically talked to us as if we were little kids.

Basically I don't understand how old I need to get to be treated with respect.