Sunday, December 23, 2007
The Children's Hour
As a general matter, I like children. We have a lot of interests in common, for one thing. It's difficult to find people of my own age with whom I can have an intelligent discussion of High School Musical or Fruit Roll-Ups. Plus children, unlike adults, are seldom assholes. I don't think that gene kicks in until adolscence.
At the same time, though, I have to admit that one of my favorite things about living in a city is that I can generally go to a movie or restaurant without being surrounded by three-year-olds who are screaming and grinding their crayons into the apholstery. Adults will seldom kick the back of your chair or throw popcorn, even when technically they probably should. I mean, it's really the natural reaction to attending a screening of Meet Joe Black.
The really interesting thing to me, though, is the way some parents of young children tend to let them run completely amok. For instance, I was comtemplating my selection of trail mix in Target the other day, when I espied a mother blithely talking on her cell phone while her son strolled along behind her methodically dumping everything from the shelves onto the floor. On another occasion I was browsing some department store where I observed a mother so engrossed in her conversation with the cosmetics counter employee that she failed to notice her two kids smacking the hell out of each other immediately behind her. In neither case was the parent in question in fact Britney Spears.
Not that I'm judging. If I had kids, they'd probably die of rickets. I can't even keep a damned plant alive.
As a general matter, I like children. We have a lot of interests in common, for one thing. It's difficult to find people of my own age with whom I can have an intelligent discussion of High School Musical or Fruit Roll-Ups. Plus children, unlike adults, are seldom assholes. I don't think that gene kicks in until adolscence.
At the same time, though, I have to admit that one of my favorite things about living in a city is that I can generally go to a movie or restaurant without being surrounded by three-year-olds who are screaming and grinding their crayons into the apholstery. Adults will seldom kick the back of your chair or throw popcorn, even when technically they probably should. I mean, it's really the natural reaction to attending a screening of Meet Joe Black.
The really interesting thing to me, though, is the way some parents of young children tend to let them run completely amok. For instance, I was comtemplating my selection of trail mix in Target the other day, when I espied a mother blithely talking on her cell phone while her son strolled along behind her methodically dumping everything from the shelves onto the floor. On another occasion I was browsing some department store where I observed a mother so engrossed in her conversation with the cosmetics counter employee that she failed to notice her two kids smacking the hell out of each other immediately behind her. In neither case was the parent in question in fact Britney Spears.
Not that I'm judging. If I had kids, they'd probably die of rickets. I can't even keep a damned plant alive.
