Ageism

I don't feel that I'm as targeted by ageism as others my age. I'm polite, dress nicely, and generally act mature. Thus I am not bothered.

Of course, there are those moments.

On Friday night, I had my grad trip. We went to Canada's Wonderland with thousands of other teenagers for a night of fun.

It started with a line of hundreds of school buses. The parking lot must have looked like a colony of mustard yellow ants from the air.

The first sort of checkpoint came at the edge of the parking lot. A security guard came on the bus and barked orders at us. Not even a hello, or even a breath it seemed as she went into "I'm not gonna yell, I've already been through 600 buses, so listen up", and then continued with a spiel about how we are not to have drugs, alcohol, weapons, etc.

Next, when the bus had parked, a cop came on board to repeat the speech (albeit in a much nicer tone). He then searched our bags before we were allowed off the bus.

All this before the regular park security which also includes a bag search. Not to mention the policemen they hired to patrol the park.

We had paid $40 to be treated like criminals. Had it been "Seniors Night" or perhaps "Advertising Industry Night" instead of "Grad Night", the extra security wouldn't have been in place.

Blatant ageism, right?

The smell of weed wafted through Wonderland like perfume at Sephora.

And certainly in greater amounts than any other time I've been to Wonderland on regular days.

Hm.

Teenagers often complain about being followed around in stores. A bit of googling found me this:

55% of adult shoplifters started in their teens Source

1 in 4 teens admits to shoplifting before age 16 Source

Before you go ahead and say "so that means 75% of shoplifters are adults, ha!", the 2006 Statistics Canada census says that 10-19 year olds only make up 13.1% of the population Source

So, whats this all mean?

To quote SLC Punk!: "What was the point? Final summation? None."