The future of the human race!

I have decided that young people are possibly alien species. This is as a result of travelling on public transport and observing them.

This morning we were up bright and early to catch a bus to Oldham Mumps, where we caught a tram to Manchester Victoria, where we caught another tram to Manchester Piccadilly. There we wrestled with the machine for prepaid tickets to persuade it to give us the tickets we booked yesterday for a train to Liverpool South Parkway. Quite why the booking system would not allow us to print our own tickets is a mystery. And our iPhones are insufficiently sophisticated to use the app for that particular train-line. Sigh! And finally, after the train, we caught a bus to Liverpool John Lennon airport.

Anyway, I am pretty sure that young people have already developed thumbs which work in a different way from mine. They manage to hold their phones and type with their thumbs, a skill I do not possess. Our middle granddaughter finds it highly amusing that I type mostly with my two forefingers and occasionally bring in a few more fingers for support. On a touch screen keyboard, though, two fingers are usually all I can manage. This must be an age thing for I saw a lady on the tram, a lady of advanced years, although not quite so advanced as mine, with beautifully painted, obviously false, sparkly nails. One finger, her middle finger, did not have the fancy nail; this she used to tap messages and access apps on her phone.

Before seeing the lady on the tram, however, I watched teenagers on the bus, on their way to school, almost all of them plugged in to a fancy phone. One of the them held his phone horizontally flat, at right angles to his ear to listen to his music. When his friend joined him they proceeded to swap and compare things they had found on u-tube, all highly amusing.

Not much later, on the tram I overheard a conversation between two slightly older teenagers, probably sixth-form college students. They were discussing the future, a future in which one of them maintained that owning smart phones would be obligatory. Everyone will need them to pay for stuff. Tangible money (his terminology) is already on the way out. Soon it will be a thing of the past. Not only that, all humans will be chipped, rather as dogs are now. This too will be obligatory. They are already in use in the USA!! So he maintained! All those Mexican children who were separated from their parents have been chipped! On Trumps orders! So he maintained!

We will undoubtedy follow suit, he also maintained. His friend, so far relatively quiet, asked why. Well, he was told, we are always behind the Americans in technology. Whereupon his mate pointed out that it was “one of ours” who invented the computer!

At that point we got off the tram.


Then there are the clothes. Ripped jeans. So many exposed bony knees. Will they all have arthrotic knees in the future?i eemember when we used to buy new Levi’s and wash them at least five times before wearing to get rid of the new look. Just as they reached the perfect level,of fabric softness, they began tomwear out at the knees and we had to start all over again. No doubt, our parents thought we were crazy not to patch them. Nowadays, they would be perfect?

On the plane I overheard a little conversation between a small boy and his father. This was just after the plane took off.

 Small boy: Daddy, are we still on earth? Or are we in space?

 Daddy, after a pause: Well, we are in the atmosphere.

 Small boy: What’s the atmosphere?

Time for some explanatory diagrams, I thought.

Later in the flight I heard the same small boy reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to himself, carefully working out the words, spelling them out and occasionally asking for a meaning.

Brilliant! There is hope for the human race, after all!