telling off an old lady

I wanted to tell off a lady the other day. She muttered under her breath as she walked by me, just loud enough for me to be insulted by her words.

I had just gotten my suitcases from baggage claim and was standing with my dear girlfriend, Shannon and her suitcases. We weren't in the middle of a crowd. All the luggage had been claimed. We were minding our own business, trying to figure out which door my other dear girlfriend, Stacey, would be picking us up at. Seriously, minding our own business. No one was nearby. Our business. No one else's business.

I had gotten a Snapchat from my niece who is a very, very far away in Michigan at college. (Definition of Snapchat: an app that allows you to send a picture with a very short phrase to your contacts. Not a necessary app, but a fun one to use with my niece.). At this point, we weren't walking anywhere. Just standing off to the side, minding our own business, so I decided to take a Snapchat picture and send it back to her. We were comparing weather. February in Michigan vs February in Phoenix (I won, by the way). 

As I turn the camera to myself to take a selfie with a goofy facial expression (because that's what selfies should be - fun), an older lady who had walked by us a moment earlier, came past us again, as we were minding our own business, muttered under her breath loud enough for me to hear "...taking selfies..." and walked away, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of me taking a selfie in an airport. 

SHE DID NOT MIND HER OWN BUSINESS!!!

So here's what really bothered me about the situation. I'm not typically a selfie type of gal. I rarely post pictures of just myself. I don't know why; I guess it's not really my style. However, communication with my niece is extremely important to me. When my nieces and nephews reach out in any form of communication to me, I respond. When they post on Instagram or Facebook, I try to "like" every one of their posts. 

Like it or not, the generation just below me (and maybe a couple generations below you) lives in this technology/electronic/iPhone/social media world. It's what they have grown up in. It defines parts of their lives that you never experienced at their age. Sure, you can sit there and criticize how often they use their phones.

OR you can be involved in their lives by way of texting, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Snapchat, or whatever way you have to communicate with them, to share in their lives, to let them know that you care about what they are doing and to be there for them. Communication is communication, no matter what form it takes.

Your choice.

Personally, I'll take the chance that someone is going to mistake my communication with my niece as some self-involvement on my phone, because she's just that important to me. 

(By the way, I didn't go tell that lady off. I don't have it in me to chase someone down in an airport to tell them that they shouldn't be so quick to judge a selfie-taker. Plus I would have been dragging quite a bit of luggage behind me. But I did huff and puff about it for a while to my girlfriends till I felt better about the situation. And then I went and wrote this blog about it so that helps too. 😉)

KC

PS - I might have had a little too much fun searching for selfies...