Children, Airports and Inappropriate questions.

Let me preface this by saying I'm kind of a dick because I am happy to speak my mind. My Mum raised me so that I felt I had something to say that I'd say it and that I don't tend to acquiesce out of the need appear 'polite'.

Anyways, so, this was a few weeks back. I was at an airport waiting around in a seat for the plane to get there so we could board, some old woman and her presumably grandson decided to plop down behind me on this weird little circular thing seating arrangement. Kid is like 7 or 8 and he's being a general shit. Making a lot of noise so on and so forth. Which, granted y'know it's a kid, he's complaining about the food they got to eat or some bullshit. I try my best to tune it out.

I walk with a cane so I am up front waiting for the all clear to go ahead and I'm standing with a guy who had had some serious trauma at some point and was missing both of his legs so had some prosthetic legs and was standing there with me. Anyways so this old woman and her child cut the line [and I will note here that this woman and her grandson were both perfectly healthy] so I give them kind of a side eye or whatever for being general dickbags but that isn't surprising but didn't say much.

Either way this kid looks at me, looks at my cane, then looks at this guy with his prosthetic legs and says "Wow that's so cool. You have robot legs huh? I bet you never get tired at all!" The guy is trying to be super polite about it but he seems visibly taken aback and uncomfortable and just sort of nods and says "Yeah". Kid asks some more really inappropriate questions like how he got them or whatever, and I served in the military and I was guessing this guy was too and he's looking at this kid's Grandmother with that knowing look of like 'You should reign this child in that's really inappropriate' but didn't say anything so, me being me, felt the need to cut in.

I said, "Nah he gets tired like everyone else and you shouldn't really ask people questions like that. Those are just basic prosthetics from the looks of it like my cane here and we don't really have the technology yet to make robotics that good yet. What you're thinking they are would effectively amount to power armour and that's beyond us mostly because of the fact we don't have batteries compact enough to power machinery that has to be that precise since it's interfacing with the human body." [Which, granted may not be totally correct but my basic understanding of power armour/exoskeletal technology the last time I looked was primarily a power source issue.]

Guy looks at me like thank fuck someone said something, the kid looked at me astonished and genuinely interested/thoughtful like "Wow no one has ever given me a straight answer before", probably wanted to ask more but this kid's Grandmother gives him a look like be quiet really quickly before giving me the stink eye and replies in a snotty tone, "He's just a child. You didn't need to tell him all that."

Look lady if the kid is old enough to ask the question he's old enough to get an honest age appropriate answer. It's super inappropriate to ask someone who has suffered a serious injury that's left them scarred by it in one way or another the cause of it, especially if they are a perfect stranger.

Maybe this is just me because of the way I was raised but I feel like if you treat your children like they can do no wrong and like they don't need to be corrected when they are wrong they are going to turn into pieces of shit. If I wasn't ready to hear an answer I'd get the response "Well this is basic age appropriate stuff and there is more to it but I will tell you that when you're older" not some bullshit about Storks or Faeries or the Moon being made of fucking cheese. When I was a child asked why the moon was that colour I got told it was because it's reflecting light from the sun like a mirror.

Look I get kids are kids but they are also human beings, not little dolls to play dress up with and to give your life purpose. If you can't be at least partially honest with children so that they learn something what the is the point?