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Give me a staff of honour for mine age, but not a sceptre to control the world

 I used to think that the wisdom of those of us beyond a certain age would enable us to grasp even sub voce things: references usually to be understood only with explanatory follow-ups; but language has evolved so quickly, I’m not so sure anymore. Not only are the words able to shape-shift their meanings, but like the contents of old-fashioned stews, contain elements whose provenance I can only guess.

I have to admit that I find it educational to eavesdrop on today’s youth as they argue with each other across the aisles at the back of a bus. But from the senior’s section at the front it’s largely hit and miss. Conversation is a mixed martial art thing with the young, requiring ringside seats to have any success at translating the often stochastic pronouncements of their friends into a comprehensible storyline.

There are times however when the spirit of inquiry compels me to join the youthful crowd at the back; it is curiosity-driven though; it is not by invitation. And it is important not to sit too close to any of the protagonists lest I stifle their enthusiasm -I mean what kind of unfettered discussions with friends occur in the living room if a father is sitting nearby pretending to read? I have to guard against laughing at their jokes, and keep my face uncommitted if there is a suggestion of ribaldry hidden in the sniggers.

Every so often, though, especially if there is a discussion of a topic with which not even the leaders of the crowd are acquainted, I am accosted by enquiring eyes, and a hush falls over the otherwise creaky roar of the bus -its motor located as it usually is, right under the back seats. Then, like as not, the conversation continues, but in a tentative fashion so as not to unduly attract my attention; I have to pretend to be looking at something interesting on the sidewalk outside, so I don’t embarrass the people whose group I have infiltrated.

I think that one of the most interesting conversations to which I was inadvertently privy was the one on circumcision. I had the distinct impression that they were toning it down on the off chance I was eavesdropping; I also suspected that apart from the more crude terms usually applicable to the organ in question, they were unsure of an appropriate bus vocabulary.

What was in contention, I surmised, were the comparative performance features of the two options. I had to marvel at how they were able to discuss the pros and cons of something they were reluctant to name apart from the occasional use of the pseudonyms of cut versus uncut. I could have easily mistaken them for group of junior training butchers arguing their preferences either for short loins or sirloins.

Being careful to reassure them more fully of my disinterest as I continued to stare out of the window, I tried to analyse their respective positions.  Short, I gathered was code for circumcised, which left the other option, of course, as the uncut -or, as one young befreckled face blurted out by mistake, the unaltered and then immediately blushed and glanced at me in case I was Fifth Column.

Which variety worked better, seemed to be the issue of contention; each side had its adherents, but only as if they were discussing unproven philosophical counterfactuals with as much verisimilitude as the Trolley Problem. No one wished to be firmly in one camp or another; no one wanted to be permanently tarred with the consequences of either brush.

It wasn’t as if nobody wished to deny that they had ever ‘tried it with a girl’; in fact each wanted to assure the others of their acquaintance with some of the more adventuresome girls in their respective classrooms. No, each of them was trying to assure the group of their expertise in the art of seduction (one even admitted to being caught in flagrante delicto -although using decidedly less Latin and more understandable teenage words), and hence the value of his opinion as regards one option versus the other. Significantly, he didn’t mention whether he had suffered any criticism for his performance, nor whether or not he had been ‘altered’.

Then, obviously hoping he hadn’t outed himself, he merely shrugged. “But, hey come on, it’s our parents who decide, not us, eh?”

There then ensued a decidedly male way of defusing the tension: everybody butted shoulders, or soft-punched each other’s arms and guffawed. Then they all reached for their phones.

In a way, I felt disappointed, left out of the crowd. I suppose I had hoped for a free ranging exchange of opinions, unrefereed by Google. Untethered by facts, or contaminated by medical terms.

That it’s a ‘different world’, is a truism, to be sure, but one that misses the point, I think. Bouncing new and unique opinions off each other and waiting for them to rebound often gives more interesting answers than are found in the trove of facts hoping to be liberated from the phone as if from a Pandora’s Box (actually a Jar).

Pandora quickly closed the lid of her jar after inadvertently liberating evil into the world; but do you remember what legend says was left trapped in the box?

It was Hope. But in this iteration, it was the fragments of imagination that I could hear being tentatively explored before the phones rendered those ideas no longer tenable. Before the mystery was considered solved…

Remember the poet John Keats’ who accused physicist Isaac Newton of destroying the poetry and mystery of a rainbow by reducing its colors to a scientific prism?

Sometimes phones are like that; so are teenagers…

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