Writer's Block: Senior Living

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Re-tire-ment? What is this of which you speak? I'm afraid I'm not familiar ... Wait, isn't that something non-1-percenters used to get to do?

"What's wrong with our children?" Oh let me! Let me!!

Did you guys hear about this 68-year-old woman in New York who was a bus monitor razzed and harassed by young teenagers?

I think I can hear the spontaneous collective orgasm of "I TOLD YOU SO" over at the childfree community, if I listen really closely. Which is a mixed comment from me, since I'm still technically a member of it - I just haven't had it on my reading f-list for a few years because of the extremists in their midst.

I bet you're expecting a profanity-laced treatise on how if one of those children were mine, I'd dig a hole under the foundation of my house and keep him in it until he was 17-1/2 and old enough to be pushed into the Marines (well, I would) and how it's society's fault the little bastards are like this today. But that would be ignoring the obvious truth that needs to be said and that some baby-crazy people tend to romanticize away: Small children are savages, they've always been savages, that have to be twisted around (figuratively) and made flexible and socialized in order to live around older human beings. And if they're not, in any time, they'll be nasty crabapples as they age.

This is what I mean: Children are not born knowing manners or compassion, or anything else. Babies are centered on themselves and their needs, and small children are the same way. It's their parents', siblings', grandparents', teachers', and other close adults-in-their-lives' jobs to do little bits here and there to shape them as they age, into human beings who can function among others in society and be decent people, and still develop their own personalities and recognize when going with the flow isn't a good idea.

I don't know if anyone knows if little hooligans like this are a worse problem now than they've ever been. My suspicion is they're not; when I was in school 25 years ago, there were boys who would've pulled this kind of stunt. If I were to ask my dad, he'd probably say the same thing about 45 years ago. It IS less acceptable for just any adult - even one ostensibly in charge of a kid - to reprimand them now, even verbally, without some helicopter parent screeching about their special Indigo Child being stifled. It's not that this attitude is new among certain parents; it just seems like "certain parents" are bigger in number than they used to be.