kids these days

I thought they’d be like the other thugs who like so many before would take their sweet time walking in front of my car like they owned the sidewalk while I fumed waiting to make my left turn. Not like kids of my youth who looked, paused, then scurried across to the other side, thanking the waiting driver for the generosity of their right of way.
I was dead wrong and momentarily ashamed for having judged these boys who waved and threw me a synchronized thumbs up quickly making their way across my egress. I threw back a thumb and a smile as they finished the crossing to which they were fully entitled but didn’t act like it.
It was a tiny reassuring moment of humanity, but comforting that I was wrong in my expectations of the moment, and that kids these days aren’t all always like I have come to expect kids these days to be.