We all float down here..

That 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.

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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.

Teachers beware

And people wonder why I loathe all "protect zer chilluns!" bullcrap.

This all started with plastic playground equipment. Plastic playground equipment is ruining our society. By not allowing children to get the normal bumps, scrapes, and contusions, we've raised an entire generation not capable of dealing with it when Baby Gets A Boo Boo. This has resulted in fear of damage and danger above and beyond anything that could have previously been considered reasonable. Parents have sprouted propellers and started hovering around their Special Little Snowflakes to ensure that SLS never encounters anything remotely unpleasant. When unpleasantness rears its head, Helicopter Parent swoops in, guns blazing, aimed for the nearest target because OF COURSE, SLS could not possibly be at fault. That would mean taking responsibility! Consequences to actions! Something that has been steadily and frighteningly removed from the curriculum of the modern child since sometime in the 80's. When good, old fashioned, wooden and metal playground equipment on sand bases was replaced with plastic atop 8" of shredded rubber.

This teacher's life and livelihood were directly and negatively and permanently impacted by the actions of one vindictive parent. The teacher's only crime was for suspending her SLS after said SLS pulled the pants down on a girl in his class. It wasn't for the original issue of .. y'know.. the SLS having semi-naked pictures of young girls on his phone. Meanwhile, what happened to SLS? What consequences happened to the disgusting, immature little shithead who thought it was ok to humiliate one of his classmates? Two day suspension from school - but what did Helicopter Parent do at home? Were there consequences, or did she spend those two days buying SLS an XBox 360 Elite and consoling him that the Big Bad Teacher would never be able to suspend him again?

I'd bet a coke I've already written the answer.