Childrenz
One problem with being a parent is that you occasionally find yourself semi-responsible for the acts of other people’s children. When your kid plays, he tends to play with other kids, whose parents may not be as…attentive as you are. You’re just trying to keep your kid from eating mulch, and suddnely a bunch of other halfwit rugrats are digging through trash cans and throwing old “forty” bottles at each other.
A few weeks ago, I took Charles to the park near our house, which has a nice little jungle gym with a couple slides. It’s usually a nice place to go because he gets bored with it quickly and wants to go home. On this occasion, while we were playing, we were descended upon by about a dozen children, ranging from a few months to 9 or 10 years old, and their grandmother, who was very friendly and nice but clearly overwhelmed. She focused mostly on the baby, while the rest of the terrors ran around injuring themselves and each other. One odd child decided the fun thing to do was to wait until my back was turned and throw a frisbee at my head. It was a pity that Granny was there, as I would have enjoyed dropping the kid out of a tree.
Charles played nicely, as is his usual wont, aside from occasionally trying to “borrow” toys from other children, which I corrected as needed. At one point, however, the older kids wandered to some nearby trees and started climbing them. Fine by me, they were 9 or 10, I was climbing trees when I was younger than that. Peer dynamics being what they are, however, most of the other kids wandered over to see what was going on. I convinced Charles that he was too small to climb trees, but by then the kids were picking up sticks off the ground and swinging them haphazardly. Hey, not my kids, not my problem, unless they came near Charles, in which case I’d start kicking butt and taking names. They didn’t, so I didn’t interfere.
This, of course, was when Granny swooped in, yelling at the kids to stop beating each other with flora, and giving me a nasty look for, I assume, having permitted her malignant seed to do such dangerous things. Because it’s my fault she showed up to a park with a plethora of idiots she couldn’t control.
I dislike other people.
