Suffer The Little Children

Considering I spend all day dealing with people, I occasionally find them surprisingly annoying. Sometimes, I might suggest, this is well deserved - the pisshead who thinks it's funny to take a crap on the floor, for example. Sometimes, I think it's probably futile. People are the way they are, and I'm not sure i can blame them for that, any more than I might scold a cat for eating a mouse.

Children, specifically teenagers, and their parents are among the leading perpetrators.

Consider:

If you think you are old enough, are mature enough to get drunk, go skateboarding au naturel, and then fall on your head, you should be mature enough to accept that your treatment will have to be in hospital, that a cervical collar is a bit uncomfortable (tho only for a bit, and much less uncomfortable than 60 years as a quadraplegic...) Instead, you will whine incessantly about wanting to go home, about how there can be no needles involved in your treatment. This last is despite your multiple piercings.

And this makes me cross, but perhaps it shouldn't, because my attempt at logically suggesting that your decision that you're mature enough to get drunk and arse about isn't made because you are mature, but precisely the opposite; and so when you act like a scared child, it is because that is what you are; and I can't blame you for that, can I?

Consider:

If you're child gets run over while in the charge of another child, and if she bears the insult of a fractured femur with quiet dignity while you fret about how you didn't see anything, and sway from side to side, smelling faintly of drink, I can't help but feel slightly aggrieved, if only on behalf of the child whose leg we will soon be pulling straight. But maybe it's too much to expect you not to drink, and to supervise your children crossing busy roads. The Green Cross Code Man has gone the way of C90 cassette tapes, so who does teach kids road safety? Maybe that degree of responsibility is just beyond you.


If you take your child to a party, and they get drunk, so drunk that when you bring them home they become belligerent, shouting abuse at you, breaking your lamps, it surely isn't really your fault that you can't cope. If that level of common sense, or emotional maturity is beyond you, I shouldn't be surprised it's beyond your growing offspring, and it really is unfair to be cross with you...

After all, shit does happen, eh?