Age-ism
As I’ve said before, on many occasions, Kristy The Younger of KKFamilyHistory, gets lots of “looks” and double-takes whenever she goes researching history. She’s a young genealogist and that’s wonderful. She brings a new dimension to the sometimes staid environment of an “older persons hobby”. Alona Tester wrote a great article on our younger genealogists in her post Don’t Stereotype a Genealogist. Still, many older people just don’t “get it” when she arrives in their territory.
But today, I experienced ‘reverse ageism’. It was a very strange feeling and one I was quite confronted by. We had arranged a day out researching but I won’t say where because I don’t want to defame anyone. We had many items of various families that we needed to confirm and get copies of. So Kristy had written a list of them all and after we deposited our belongings into the lockers we headed to the desk to request the items. The young man there was very nice and helpful. Kristy took her ID with her and I had mine in the pocket of my jeans. As she wrote out the requests she used her ID card and I stood beside her listening in.
That was all good. She’s pretty, he seemed interested, although somewhat a little too ‘modern’ for my liking, and that was about the extent of it. We started getting all the items and got engrossed in all our ‘finds’. After a while I decided to go up and order another and I took my small notepad over to the young man’s desk while Kristy also retrieved the next in our list. She walked away and I stayed there waiting for my turn.
Well, the look I got I couldn’t believe. He just stared at me like I was some sort of alien. ”I’d like to get your help on this please” I politely said. Still the quizzical look. ”Um…” he looked over at Kristy and then back at me. ”Do you know what to do?” he asked. Luckily I didn’t have a slingshot in my pocket or he may have lost an eye. Instead I pulled out my ID card and quietly, but through gritted teeth, said “Yes I do. In fact, I have been doing this sort of research for longer than you’ve been alive. That’s my daughter over there. I taught her about this or is that a little hard to believe?”
He fumbled for words. I fumbled for a smile but instead gave him a lovely sneer and raised eyebrow that only young men who are interested in young women recognise from old mothers. “Now are we going to get the items or are we going to stand here gawking at each other, dear?” THEN!! to top it off, we sat down near the door to look at our ‘finds’ and lo and behold, in walked an aged woman, with quite a brutish swagger about her, and she turned and stood deliberately staring at Kristy…rudely. I stared back and she moved on.
What a very weird world we step into sometimes as we try to step out of it and back into the past. Strange feeling, as I said and one I wasn’t very happy with. Just what age includes or precludes you from calling yourself a genealogist?