He's such a freak.
Dec. 11th, 2009 06:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spookyeviloneThat Guy is off at IceFest, a chance for crazy people who like to climb to maneuver their way up flows of ice in sub-zero temperatures and windchill, potentially freezing fingers, toes and other random assorted bits of self off. So, he's doing his part to make sure there's no unauthorized progeny anytime soon. He says "fun", I say a way to keep core body temperature at sperm-killing lows, so it's all good.1
I'm doing my part. I went grocery shopping last night. Pretty much any shopping the month before $Winter_Holidays is the best form of birth control, I've found. Constant exposure to OtherPeople'sChildren. In the grocery store, I witnessed various spawn doing:
1) Picking nose and eating it. This might be in the grey area of socially acceptable for toddlers, but it is most definitely not for teenagers.
2) Opening boxes of cookies to throw them at a sibling. Parent's response was to close the package and put it back on the shelf. I grabbed it and handed it back to her child when she wasn't looking. It was in her cart when she checked out, so she wound up paying for it. (To add some meta to this, they were the brand of cookies that happens to be That Guy's real last name.)
3) Licking produce and sticking it in their mouths to be "funny". The parent put the saliva-and-biohazard coated produce back in the bin. If you ever needed a good reminder why you should always wash produce, now you have one. I figure this child is doing the world a favour. If they consume enough pesticides early enough in life, it should - in theory - damage their DNA enough that they can't reproduce. Hey, it worked on condors..
4) Running pell-mell across a slushy, wet, filthy tile floor, while shrieking and laughing. Parents didn't even suggest they slow down. I haven't wanted to stick my foot out and trip someone so badly in a long, long time.
5) Taking eggs out of the carton and dropping them, one by one, onto the floor to watch them smash. Which made me want to start doing the same thing, only using the child's pointy little head as a landing spot from the vantage of my lofty 5'3" height.
6) Picking their nose and wiping it on the glass doors to the dairy coolers. Not the same child as in #1.
7) Gnawing the freezerburn frost off the side of a plastic container of ice cream. If you guessed that the parent put the ice cream back in the freezer, you can give yourself a kudo.
8) Slapping people who walked by their cart. The child tried to do this to me. The Icy Glare of Death sent her bolting behind her father and I made my way past the cart un-slapped.
9) Shoplifting. Badly. I reported it to a store employee, because if they're stupid enough to do it where someone can see them, they deserve to get caught. Really, how else will they learn?
10) Breaking open a 3lb bag of rice - on purpose - to "skate" on it.
Most of these fall under the 'horrible parent' category. It's also a nice list of things my children will never, ever do. This is in part due to my belief that children are by nature maladjusted little sociopaths who need to have manners beaten into them by sheer force of stronger will before they're allowed out in public. Also that being out in public is a privilege, not a right, and being a parent means being a mostly-benevolent dictator who can and will revoke said privileges when the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviours have been broken.
I've had people smugly tell me that this is jinxing myself and that I will have horribly misbehaved children, or that "when I'm a parent, I'll understand". If I had horribly misbehaved children, nobody would ever know, because they would never be allowed in public. Since these children would, in theory, have half my genetic code, it's all too likely that everyone, including me, would be under the delusion that my children were sweet, innocent, mild-mannered and well-behaved offspring and not cleverly disguised demonic agents of chaos far too intelligent to get caught. I was a perfect angel as a child. Just ask anyone in my family, or anyone who ever met me at that age.
See what I mean?
The shopping experience last night made me very glad that most things can be accomplished online these days, and made me wish there was some sort of subsidized computer purchase program for families with obnoxious parents and unruly children. If there is, it's not being utilized properly. Given half a chance, I could market the hell out of a program like that. I would volunteer, if it kept even one of these horrorshows home and out of sight.
1 - Yes, he reads this journal. There is going to be an argument about the core body temperature comment, but I maintain that anyone who goes out in weather like this has either: 1) non-sperm-producing balls of steel or, 2) frozen them into uselessness. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. Insert winter/tongue/lamp post vulgar analogy here.
Hi, That Guy. I can see the face you're making as you read this. That, of course, wouldn't have a darn thing to do with why I wrote it. *halo* I hope you have fun climbing ice, even if I think you're crazy.
I'm doing my part. I went grocery shopping last night. Pretty much any shopping the month before $Winter_Holidays is the best form of birth control, I've found. Constant exposure to OtherPeople'sChildren. In the grocery store, I witnessed various spawn doing:
1) Picking nose and eating it. This might be in the grey area of socially acceptable for toddlers, but it is most definitely not for teenagers.
2) Opening boxes of cookies to throw them at a sibling. Parent's response was to close the package and put it back on the shelf. I grabbed it and handed it back to her child when she wasn't looking. It was in her cart when she checked out, so she wound up paying for it. (To add some meta to this, they were the brand of cookies that happens to be That Guy's real last name.)
3) Licking produce and sticking it in their mouths to be "funny". The parent put the saliva-and-biohazard coated produce back in the bin. If you ever needed a good reminder why you should always wash produce, now you have one. I figure this child is doing the world a favour. If they consume enough pesticides early enough in life, it should - in theory - damage their DNA enough that they can't reproduce. Hey, it worked on condors..
4) Running pell-mell across a slushy, wet, filthy tile floor, while shrieking and laughing. Parents didn't even suggest they slow down. I haven't wanted to stick my foot out and trip someone so badly in a long, long time.
5) Taking eggs out of the carton and dropping them, one by one, onto the floor to watch them smash. Which made me want to start doing the same thing, only using the child's pointy little head as a landing spot from the vantage of my lofty 5'3" height.
6) Picking their nose and wiping it on the glass doors to the dairy coolers. Not the same child as in #1.
7) Gnawing the freezerburn frost off the side of a plastic container of ice cream. If you guessed that the parent put the ice cream back in the freezer, you can give yourself a kudo.
8) Slapping people who walked by their cart. The child tried to do this to me. The Icy Glare of Death sent her bolting behind her father and I made my way past the cart un-slapped.
9) Shoplifting. Badly. I reported it to a store employee, because if they're stupid enough to do it where someone can see them, they deserve to get caught. Really, how else will they learn?
10) Breaking open a 3lb bag of rice - on purpose - to "skate" on it.
Most of these fall under the 'horrible parent' category. It's also a nice list of things my children will never, ever do. This is in part due to my belief that children are by nature maladjusted little sociopaths who need to have manners beaten into them by sheer force of stronger will before they're allowed out in public. Also that being out in public is a privilege, not a right, and being a parent means being a mostly-benevolent dictator who can and will revoke said privileges when the boundaries of socially acceptable behaviours have been broken.
I've had people smugly tell me that this is jinxing myself and that I will have horribly misbehaved children, or that "when I'm a parent, I'll understand". If I had horribly misbehaved children, nobody would ever know, because they would never be allowed in public. Since these children would, in theory, have half my genetic code, it's all too likely that everyone, including me, would be under the delusion that my children were sweet, innocent, mild-mannered and well-behaved offspring and not cleverly disguised demonic agents of chaos far too intelligent to get caught. I was a perfect angel as a child. Just ask anyone in my family, or anyone who ever met me at that age.
See what I mean?
The shopping experience last night made me very glad that most things can be accomplished online these days, and made me wish there was some sort of subsidized computer purchase program for families with obnoxious parents and unruly children. If there is, it's not being utilized properly. Given half a chance, I could market the hell out of a program like that. I would volunteer, if it kept even one of these horrorshows home and out of sight.
1 - Yes, he reads this journal. There is going to be an argument about the core body temperature comment, but I maintain that anyone who goes out in weather like this has either: 1) non-sperm-producing balls of steel or, 2) frozen them into uselessness. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. Insert winter/tongue/lamp post vulgar analogy here.
Hi, That Guy. I can see the face you're making as you read this. That, of course, wouldn't have a darn thing to do with why I wrote it. *halo* I hope you have fun climbing ice, even if I think you're crazy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 11:46 am (UTC)I have seen bad behaviour like this in the South, but it's rare. Mostly because we're still allowed to slap the shit outta our youngun's. Even in public.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 02:39 pm (UTC)Hopefully my spawn will be behaved, because if I saw any of that behavior from my kid I would lose it. I do the same thing with my students and behavior on what is and isn't acceptable.
Crys
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 10:03 pm (UTC)words I have never uttered!
Because I know how to control my child and teach him how to behave and if he can't behave, we leave.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 10:49 pm (UTC)I have, however, broken my mother's rules about Going To The Store, by swinging down the cracker aisle first, getting a bag of Goldfish and opening them for the two of them to share while I shopped. After a day at the babysitter and me having to shop for dinner, it was the only thing that got us through the store swiftly and silently. And I *still* to this day feel guilty. Not that we didn't pay for it, but that I opened it before we did. But damn. There are nights you just want to get your food and go home, and not living up to my mother's standards seemed a low price to pay.
I had to bail out of an art exhibition that I stood in line for over an hour to get into, paid good money for and just didn't get to see. He was tired, crabby and at the end of being able to be social. Not his fault, he was two. So I scooped him up and glanced at the Wyeths as I cruised past with him on my shoulder, and missed out. Part of parenting. I was bummed, but I was pretty sure that if *I* didn't want to listen to my screaming child, no one else did either.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-14 05:40 pm (UTC)