Teaching Rudeness

I have written before about how I am not a parent.  I have also written about how people seem to be getting more and more rude.  I am starting to see how the two things are starting to correlate.  It seems to me that at some point the entire point of being a parent got lost and the whole idea of setting up rules and teaching kids how to behave in public fell by the wayside.  In turn, this has created a generation of people who honestly feel they don’t need to consider other people around them and that the entire world revolves around them. 

Not long ago both of my parents went to a movie.  As they sat a mother and her two children sat directly behind them.  The young boy proceeded to then repeatedly kick the back of my mother’s chair.  Repeated looks back in an attempt to notify the mother that her son was behaving rudely produced no response.  At some point it was just better to move so they moved.  My mother, however, informed the mother that she may want to take a moment to teach her son not to kick the backs of people’s chairs.  The mother responded like a deer in the headlights and proceeded to let her son keep kicking the back of the chair throughout the rest of the movie. 

Not long ago, I was in a church service.  A young father came in and sat near the front.  He had a small child with him.  This child was old enough to speak, however, and spoke well.  How do I know?  Because the child was speaking, nay yelling, loud enough for people outside the church to hear him clearly, that’s how.  I sat there and watched the father.  I waited for the father to lean over and tell his child to be quiet.  I waited for him to grab the child and carry him hastily out of the church.  Neither happened so the rest of us got to sit through a service punctuated by loud remarks and noises from a two year old. 

I think at some point the idea came about that only positive things should be said to children.  It is as if their egos are so fragile that telling them “NO” about anything will so shatter them they will all become mass murderers or perhaps Marilyn Manson or something like that an no one wants that.  I, on the other hand, think that the reason we have kids who think it’s OK to settle arguments with classmates by stabbing them or shooting them is because boundaries have not been set. 

Of course there are those who seem to think it is the rest of the world’s j ob to raise everyone else’s kids.  Hilary Clinton loves the idea of it taking a village to raise kids.  I don’t care where she got this idea, I think that it’s a piece of crap theory and should be flushed and done so immediately.  It should not be up to me or anyone else to raise anyone else’s kids.  It should be up to the parents to properly train their children how to behave around other people and how to behave in public and around people. 

 

I am quite sure that this must have started long enough ago that most of the people currently out there procreating were raised in this manner.  It seems to me that half of the people in grocery stores must have been raised this way.  Here is a tip from Poppa Bryan to you shoppers who were raised believing you were the only person in the world.  If you are going to stand there staring at the jars of applesauce for eighteen hours, kindly move your car over enough that people can get past you.  The rest of the world is not really dying to sit there and watch you debating whether or not to get the Mott’s or the generic brand while we wait to be able to pass you.  We just want to get to the aisle that has potato chips and then move on.   

Here’s an idea for you.  How about you get off the *&*^%$^% cell phone when it’s your turn to pay at any establishment?  The rest of us behind you do not want to stand there while you attempt to carry on a completely stupid and unimportant conversation, work with your purse, find your money, pay the person, handle your purchase and find a place for your change.  Get off the damn phone, conduct your business and then call the person back.  In fact, why not wait until you get home and then call them back. 

If you ever end up behind somebody who appears to be driving drunk more than likely they are on a cell phone.  They dip and weave and drive too slowly.  They swerve from left to right.  They are so busy talking about something more than likely galatically stupid that they are not paying attention to what street they are on. 

People, you must share the planet with other people.  Children need to be raised to realize they are not the most important things in the world.  They must realize that while life is precious, not just their life is precious.  That means you hold the door open for the older person trying to get in.  You hold the door open for the person behind you.  You look before you back out of the parking space.  You realize you are not alone in the store and you look to see if there are people behind you.  Finally, you shut up in a movie, church service or any other place where silence in preferred.  It is not cute or letting the child express themselves by just letting the kid jabber loudly when someone else is talking. It’s annoying and you need to tell the kid to shut the hell up.   

What happened when I mouthed off to my parents?  They told me to be quiet?  What happened when I came screaming into the kitchen while my mother was on the phone?  She told me to shut up.  What they did not do is try to be my buddy and just laugh and tell me it was all right to express myself and loudly and obnoxiously as I wanted any time and anywhere I so desired.  They taught me there was a time and place for things and that I should be considerate of others around me and not just assume everyone wanted to listen to or watch me do whatever I wanted. 

I guess this is an idea that has become old-fashioned.  Now, if your kid wants to stand up in the middle of the funeral service and sing the Elmo Song that should be fine because junior might have some bad memory of that twenty years from then.  Personally, I say who cares.  No matter what you do your kid will hate you at some point anyway.  All kids do.  No one is perfect.   

Just remember how you could have taught them limits and boundaries when they are sitting in prison kicking a drug habit after an aggravated assault charge has been pressed against them and they have been convicted.  Maybe telling the kid to shut the hell up when he or she is three would have been better. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.

Photographing is for Chowderheads

My family has never been big on photographs.  I am talking about my immediate family.  I have aunts and uncles who fancy themselves professional photographers and seem to be willing to capture every single moment of every day of their children and grandchildren.  I think some of them want to be able to stack all of these pictures together and then flip through them to create some kind of flip-book animation that shows every moment of their grandchildren.  In my immediate family pictures have never been a big deal. 

Sure there are pictures of key events.  However, my parents home is not lined with pictures of every moment of my life or my brother’s life.  Why?  Well, I have news for some of you.  Not everything needs to be filmed and documented and hung upon the wall for people to see as if every moment of your life is worth some kind of exhibit in a museum. 

Other families seem to think that everything that everyone in their family does is worthy of remembering.  I think this is a problem.  I think this has created a kind of rudeness that didn’t exist maybe as little as fifteen years ago.  These day, of course, everything in the world comes with a camera.  Cameras themselves are practically microscopic.  Your phone has a camera.  Your MP3 player has a camera.  You toothbrush probably has a camera just in case you don’t have enough film of your dental habits in your photo albums. 

While technology is great sometimes I think it can be a problem making it too accessible to people.  There should, perhaps, be some kind of movement that actually reduces people’s dependencies and technological tendencies.  At the very least, for a start in that direction, we need to limit the number of cameras in the world.   

I was in church recently.  At the far end of the pew from where I was sitting was a nice looking older couple.  As the service went forward I kept seeing movement out of the corner of my eye.  At some point I realized that the man in this couple had a tiny camera and was turning around and pointing it up toward the balcony where the organist sits and musicians sometimes sit and where the choir often sits.  There was a choir of girls in grades 6 – 8 singing that day.  I am assuming these were related to one of these girls in some way.  What this guy didn’t seem to understand is that turning around and pointing this tiny camera was causing the people sitting behind him to do all kinds of contortions in an attempt to stay clear of his shot. 

Now, one thing that the uninitiated when it comes to church should know is that you do NOT, under ANY circumstances, turn around to look at things unless expressly told to do so in the bulletin.  Moses himself may have reappeared in black-face and top hat while holding a cane and singing “Mammie” but you were NOT to turn around.  It was as if doing so would cause God to hurtle large, smoldering, craggy, violent, but ultimately holy and divine meteors through the roof of the church where they would then promptly embed themselves into your skull.   

So, needless to say, this couple was violating this rule.  Violation of this rule is accepted from time to time, however.  What I could not believe was that they truly felt that filming this was something important.  Can you honestly tell me you spend time watching all of the video footage you have of your child?  Were these people going to be sitting at home one night and say, “Gee, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is a repeat tonight so let’s watch little
Nancy’s choir performance in church from January of 2007?”   

Most of life is boring.  I have news for you.  Your child is boring.  Your life is boring.  The things your kid does may be absolutely wonderful and great for you but to the rest of us it is about the same as trying to watch carpeting grow.  Unless your kid is a talking infant, blowing bubbles from accidentally swallowing soap or passing wind in a passable version of the “Star-Spangled Banner” they are probably not doing anything interesting. 

Also, I am betting your kids never want to see that stuff again.  I know my dad went through a phase of taking 8 millimeter films of family functions.  You had to have an actual film projector to watch these things.  My family has done that all of three times that I can remember in my life.  You know what they show?  A favorite is to show me knocking my young cousin off of my toy “Sit – ‘N – Spin” so I could ride it. 

Did you have one of those toys?  They don’t make toys this silly or fun anymore. It was exactly what its name was.  You sat on it and turned this wheel and you spun around.  Really fast.  I might as well have been called the “Sit – ‘N – Puke.”  I loved mine.  However, I would rather choose to remember the fun times when I used this toy than the moment I acted like a spoiled jerk and nearly injured my cousin trying to get to the toy.   

I am betting little
Nancy has no desire to watch herself standing in a church balcony singing “What Child is This?” anytime soon.  Right now she is just happy she didn’t screw up the words or fall over the edge of the balcony.  I highly doubt when she is 35 and sitting with her own kids and suddenly have a desire to show some shaky video that shows a blurry picture of her in sixth grade singing the same song mentioned before.   

Thankfully my family never did get a video recorder to capture every moment of our lives growing up.  My dad did not show up and record my one and only humiliating season playing little league baseball.  This has left me to freely build mental blocks around those memories and pretend like it never happened. 

Taking pictures for special moments is fine.  Even those need to be done with caution.  I hope to never run across the photos that were taken of me and my prom date, for example.  However just because junior has figured out how to put food in his mouth rather than his hair I don’t think qualifies as one of those moments. 

Oh, and I would like to encourage the rest of us that, should we see someone trying to capture something stupid to start putting ourselves in the way.  Why do we all freeze and move out of these people’s way?  Stand up.  Wave your hands.  Stick out your tongue.  That way they won’t want to look at those pictures anymore. 

Bryan W. Alaspa’s novel Dust is available in print and eBook format at his website www.bryanalaspa.com and www.amazon.com.