The Loud Demographic

I attended an open house at the volunteer office for the film fest this evening. There were 70 people who signed up to listen to a couple of seminars. The demographic of this group was all over the map: slightly more females than males, ages ranging from young to not-so-young, people representing every nationality on the planet. But of these people, three of them stood out to me: Brown-clothed Woman, Blue-clothed Woman, and White Bandana Woman. They stood out because they were the ones who basically yelled out questions and comments throughout the session, regardless of whether it was question period or not. There was no order, no "raise your hand" as we had been taught time and again. Just random blurting, like "Were you at Cannes last year? I remember your voice!"

At first it struck me as being rude, since occasionally the speaker was still speaking at the time. And a few of the questions were posed just before the speaker was about to cover the topic. But looking a little more closely at these women, I realized a couple of things: a) they were women, and b) they were slightly not-so-young women belonging to different (or maybe similar) ethnic minorities. So their general loudness could be attributed to the fact that they weren't raised in the same culture and society in which I was raised. Or (and this is my scarier conclusion) it could be inherent in the gender. So when I reach the age of not-so-young, I could naturally end up being a loud, obnoxious blurter.

Or perhaps not. Looking around, all of the younger volunteers had no questions whatsoever. Maybe I'll be a member of a silent generation. Not likely, but still just as scary.

"When I grow up I'll be stable, when I grow up I'll turn the tables"