Monkey See Monkey Do

Addison Bruce

Photo courtesy of Addison Bruce and puddleskunk3 on TikTok

If you’re reading this, chances are you are currently in Golden High School or just got home from school. There is also a chance that this magazine is lying on the floor, in the trash, or rotting in a locker despite the money and effort put into it. Whether you’re in the building or not, I’d hope you can picture our school in your head. Think of where we’re located, the condition of the building, and the many utilities we have the privilege of having access to. Looking around campus, GHS is a beautiful, open place with nature all around. We have an amazing environment with great teachers and lots of comfort that we all take advantage of as much as we may deserve it. Outside of the campus, we have establishments surrounding us like Santiagos and Natural Grocers. If you take Ford, you’re exposed to the tourist destination of Downtown Golden and, past that, expensive homes that some people only ever dream of.

If you have, think back to a day you left campus during lunch to go to Santiagos, Natural Grocers, Dominos, Taco Bell, etc. Was there a trail of trash on the ground? Were there kids saying slurs? Did these kids have the same faces, the same hair, and the same home? Were they kind to workers? Were you kind to the workers? I hate to sound like a flourishing Karen with an extremely bright, successful, and untouchable future, but GHS is riddled with entitled children.

Cecily, a woman who works at Santiagos, says that at the beginning of the school year, students’ behavior with how they treat the staff and restaurant can be “rough.” Some students have a hard time listening to the staff, whether they were asked to wait outside for their order or to push their seats in after dining. Furthermore, if these students are not politely asked by the staff, “it won’t be done.” So, what is the solution when asking nicely does not suffice, but students don’t have any drive to preemptively respect their space? Surprisingly, Cecily estimated that out of the lunch rush during school hours, there are about 4 or 5 students who don’t tip. This estimate is quite uplifting because it is a lot more than expected. She gushed about how they are “grateful for those [kids]” who do tip but also for the business in general. However, tipping does not excuse the poor treatment of the establishment. Once their meals are done, many students (mostly freshmen) “are leaving their mess behind.” On behalf of herself and the rest of the Santiago staff, Cecily asks all of us to “just be respectful.” She expands by explaining that they just want to take care of us and all of their customers, but it is hard when they “already know that they don’t want to listen to [them].”

The next time you eat lunch, whether it is in Santiagos, Taco Bell, the school cafeteria, or anywhere, be aware of your waste, language, and spatial capacity, and take the time to make someone else’s day easier. Those who tolerate disrespect are choosing to show you respect despite it not being reciprocated. The employees at these establishments are choosing to serve you and treat you like a human being, and they deserve that same emotional maturity. As a student body and as a generation, we have the ability to recognize our own behavior. We have the strength to reflect on our own actions and correct them; the only tricky part is recognizing them.

Monkey see monkey do, right? The students who I’ve noticed that treat the world like respect is a foreign concept are mimicking the adults or friends in their lives. Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and the generations before us are failing miserably. Our Baby Boomer President, who is demented and sundowning, has proven that their generation’s presence and comprehension, as well as intellect, is slipping. Gen X had a whole war with Gen Z over TikTok and Instagram, two platforms that turn our dehydrated and malnourished brains to green, sloppy goo, all with the background sound of Eminem’s angelic voice. Millennials are actually kinda chill, but they are still frozen in a time of male loneliness, cringey Zooms that get too close to their IPA-traced mouths, and red lipstick. All of them combined can’t tell what’s AI or not, or better yet, can but still endorse it! Older folks have and continue to prove that they want what is easy because they no longer care what they leave us behind. They don’t care what we have to rebuild, they don’t mind that our generation will never be able to afford a house of our own even though they bargained theirs for the price of a bread loaf, they couldn’t be bothered that our atmosphere is turning into an incubator with no season besides summer, they just cannot be budged with the idea of our consequences for their actions.

If the adults who claim to be the examples we are supposed to eventually parallel are exactly what is wrong with the world, how is life ever going to get better? Better yet, what will our futures look like if we do follow in their sloppy paths? If your friends or your family or your teachers or anybody, adult or not, behaves questionably, maybe use the green goo that is in your cranium, slosh it around a little, and hope that some neurons stick together to form a thought. Maybe, just maybe, if you have the funds to go somewhere out to eat instead of getting free lunch, you have enough money to tip the underpaid, overworked human staring at you from across the cash register. If you don’t have the money to tip, human decency and manners are also a form of currency, a currency called respect. Saying hello to somebody, asking how their day was, saying please, thank you, and treating someone as they exist is the bare minimum, but so rare. What, ChatGPT didn’t teach you how to interact with people?

Our time and resources on Earth are temporary, but that was never an excuse to take advantage of them. We are at a time in our lives where AI is pushing out ideas to you before you have time to expand your lungs, art is being lost, originality is somehow a priority yet a forgotten sensation at once, technology is expected, and being anything but a robot programmed to graze the same footsteps where millions already marched is frowned upon.

A teacher today asked if I had a politician that I looked up to. I don’t look up to any politician, but it begs a deeper question: Is there someone who is advocating for our generation? Is there someone speaking up for us? But the truth is, not really. Mixed with all of the chaos, Gen Z has become the middle child that everyone forgot about because they’re worried about anything else. That’s why there is discouraging and disappointing behavior that follows these kids around like a stinky green aura. PEEYEW! There is nobody telling them differently because every adult alive is preoccupied with how to make a quick buck with the least amount of effort or not turn into a phantom because of Big Brother. Their children are either following their footsteps or advocating for themselves. The largest number of people I have seen show up for an anti-gun violence protest in Golden, Colorado, has been during our school walkouts. Like the middle child, our generation is forced to stand up for ourselves. All of these factors, the disappointment we face from those who already got a chance at life, the disappointment we face from those growing alongside us, the disappointment we face from those price tags that inflate week by week, the stabs our hope takes every minute of every day, should encourage us to be the best we can. Like growing up, the technical loneliness of each individual you face during the school year is scary, but it’s also exactly what the world is counting on. We are our own voices, our own structure, and our own hope all at once.

“You are the most talented, most interesting, and most extraordinary person in the universe, and you are capable of amazing things, because you are the special. And so am I, and so is everyone. […] And you, still, can change everything.” – Emmet (The Lego Movie, 2014)