The People Behind (is it okay to feel overwhelmed by eleven year olds?) - SHORT ESSAY

On a flight home that was delayed by over four hours, I was sat in front of 3 generations; a grandmother, mother and child. The two adults were loud and, honestly, obnoxious. Their anger was justified (Ryanair is a bitch), but needlessly embarrassing. They complained in the way that people do when they forget there are two hundred other people in the exact same frustrating situation. (I mean hell, there was a Father on board with a new born BABY. No one had it harder than he did. But I digress).

The eleven-year-old girl behind me, in between her mother and grandmother, kept trying to defend the pilot, as her parents loudly called him an idiot. “He’s said he’s really sorry, mum!”. The whole time, I just felt so incredibly sorry for her, as she tried desperately to minimize the surrounding rudeness. I could immediately empathise with her and her lack of control.

Sat waiting on the plane for another hour before take-off, in seats that may or may not have been made out of Lego (Ryanair, why won’t you refund me, what is this?), I felt sure I was over simplifying the characters in the family behind me. In my head, the child was virtually abandoned in the stressful situation. Quickly, I had villainised the parents, seeing that they were too distracted by their loud opinions to notice or reassure her. I knew that I was wrong to imagine I understood their lives and I’m sure this shows faults in my behaviour equal to theirs.

In defence of my habit of immediately sympathising with younger people: it frustrates me when people my age, on the cusp of leaving teenage-dom behind, find it possible to look at children or younger teenagers and be irritated. Or condescending, or patronising. Or worse of all: envious. It’s like that line from The Perks of Being A Wallflower, that I always go back to (I swear this sentence sloshes round my head on a daily basis): “There are people who forget what it’s like to be sixteen when they turn seventeen.” I’ve only watched the film once, a really long time ago, and have been too scared to re-watch because of how emotionally draining it was. But that one line really struck me and stayed with me throughout all the teen years. I don’t want to be one of those people. The memories are too important and being sixteen took too long.

On the plane, I helplessly willed some of my support to reach the eleven-year-old through the back of my chair. I wanted to communicate to her, but I don’t know how to word all the things I would want to say. Bizarrely there is a disconnect, that I have found in the last few years of my life. I don’t know how to communicate with that age group anymore. I feel overwhelmed by the presence of the self-consciousness and vulnerability and genius of eleven years olds (and maybe by the reminder of my eleven-year-old self).

The feeling of disconnect reminded me of the time I went camping when I was maybe six, and made a Best Friend (I can’t remember her name, but she had long, beautiful dark hair in plaits and she came from the South of England). When the holiday was over, we left without saying goodbye and so I never took her address to write to her. I sobbed hysterically the whole way home, and my mum said ‘you could drop a letter over London from a hot air balloon and hope it gets to her’. (I honestly don’t know. To this day, we can’t remember if she was trying to placate or tease me.)

Honestly, my desperation to help makes me want to throw a letter from a hot air balloon or announce it to the world. Maybe in my trying, I end up overlooking the mistakes of youth. But I know that teenagers need all the love they can get. And I don’t mean that in a condescending, patronising or envious way. ‘My heart goes out’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. When the plane landed, I smiled at the young girl as hard as I could, and then walked past. It was all I could do, and I hope she remembers.