What is it with kids these days?

I didn’t notice it until recently, but the question seems to pop up in my head particularly when I’m in the public sector.

Take Wal-Mart for example. It never fails that, when I’m minding my own business, pushing my cart, I witness some kid pitching a fit because one of Mommy or Daddy’s interests conflicted with his or her own.

And then the precious little angel decides to kick and scream and drag his or her feet across the supermarket floor.

I guess such behavior is to be expected. Kids will be kids. I probably should find it in my heart to be more understanding. After all, I am a college student.

Well, here’s another one for you. What about teenagers today?

Some of them walk around with their pants half off their butts (something college students never do), fluorescent colors in their hair and every kind of piercing covering them from head to toe. Literally. I’m not saying it’s wrong. It’s just different.

Some walk around like the world revolves around him or her, strutting with his or her headphones on, blasting music so loud that every person within 10 feet knows exactly which disturbingly amusing issues are on Eminem’s mind or how many times FABOLOUS will spell his name on his album.

Some teens have leather jackets and torn jeans and are too cool to notice the fine specimens that we college people are.

On a more frightening note, some of these young people look more like body builders and bouncers than middle or high schoolers.

I can’t lie. Whenever I’m alone and I come across one of these young people with bulging muscles, I’m constantly searching for possible exits in the event that one of them suddenly becomes violent. I only weigh a buck fifty, and everyone knows that most teenagers travel in packs.

Maybe I’m being a bit unfair. I guess it’s not fair to prejudge and label all teenagers based only on appearance. Not every one of them looks or acts like that, right? Besides, all that experimenting is just how they choose to express themselves, right?

So I’ll back off a little on our self-expressing, wild hair and clothes-dressing, music-blasting, mean-mugging millennium teens.

Bless their hearts. They’re just a little confused, but not like us college students.

There’s not much to say about us, really. We’re hard-working, responsible citizens. We’re very punctual, especially when it comes to going to our jobs and getting up for early morning classes on Friday after a late Thursday night.

We don’t fight at parties, and we resist every one of those inevitable run ins with peer pressure which could persuade us to indulge in alcohol or narcotics.

We’re the normal ones, the sophisticated ones, the mature ones. Or so we would lead ourselves – and everyone else – to think.

We’re college students! The most knowledgeable, non-finger pointing, mentally stable, responsible, self-righteous and confused breed there is.

Zach Mills is a senior print journalism major from Murfreesboro, Tenn.

The opinions expressed in this commentary represent only those of the writer and not of the Herald or of Western Kentucky University.