Teach Your Children

In my younger days, one of the popular songs was from Crosby, Stills & Nash,  entitled "Teach Your Children". It told the listener to teach their children well. Most of us from that generation did not succeed. Sure, our kids might be raised right, the thirty-somethings, but they seemed to have missed that very important lesson of "teach your children well".

Today at the local mall, they had a super-hero camp for the kids, with Spider Man as the guest hero. When the area opened, I saw mothers push their children towards the arts and crafts tables with no regards for children that were already there.
I watched parents step over children sitting in front of the small stage where the blue and red costumed hero would speak, and plop themselves and their children down blocking the view of those who already had spots.
What happened next was disgusting. It was one of the worst examples of parenting I have ever seen, and I've seen some really stupid parents. Spider Man took the stage amid the cheering crowd and immediately asked for volunteers.
Among the children there was one that had either social problems or just needed a huge kick in the ass. His mother just pointed him towards the front and he screamed at the other children on his way past them. He screamed loudly! Maniacal loud. I was glad there was a super hero there because this kid had the makings of an arch-criminal.
He kept climbing on the stage and Spider Man had to keep escorting him down. Every time I looked at Mom, she was busy taking pictures of her treasure as he disrupted life all around him. Arch-criminal. Above and beyond ordinary criminals.

While the Joker Jr. was disrupting the front of the stage area, at the back of the crowd was a Honey Boo Boo clone rolling around the floor in an anger fit. When Dad tried to calm her he took a right cross to the chin. Apparently, either he didn't know any boxing moves because this was fine with him.
This makes me wonder, What in the wild, wild west of Fuckville is happening to parenting? Why is there a problem with using discipline anymore? Why are people afraid to punish their children for bad behavior? I'm not saying Dad should have given Boo Boo a good gut buster followed by an uppercut, but jeez, even a stern look would have been something!
Then, just when I thought things couldn't get worse, the show came to an end and Spidey announced that he would be giving away a special trading card and taking pictures with the kids. He then pointed towards a long corridor made from those mall cattle chute dividers. The ones with the red canvas belt that winds out and hooks on to the next pylon.

Let's put aside the twenty-something guy that ran for the lane, pushing children out of the way so that he could get his picture with his hero. I'm chalking that one up to retardation.
But a good number of people did as instructed and walked to where the line started, entered the chute and waited their turn. That's when the ignorance swept through. I watched several women unhook the lanyard and push their children ahead of everybody that had done the right thing. By the time the guard reached the breech, at least a dozen of the rug rats had gotten in.
I was expecting tazers to be drawn but it didn't happen. Clearly, he had seen the assault the same as I had, but there was no repercussion.
I looked at the children who stood next to their parents and saw their eyes had become soft and full as the guard approached. Little halos appeared and settled into a soft orbit around their heads and their parents avoided eye-contact with the guard at all cost. All he did was shake his head and re-hook the lanyard. By the time he reached the end of the line, the lanyard had been undone again and more children poured in to the breech.

I wanted blood. I wanted Russel Crowe to enter the arena and begin chopping heads. I wanted these families pitted against each other in mortal combat, until only one family stood strong. Then I wanted them thrown to the lions.
For a moment I thought about releasing Honey Boo Boo from her leash and springing Joker Jr. from his mother and turning them loose on these maladjusted, confused parents. I wanted to see blood spilled.
I thought about the lesson these dysfunctional people were teaching their children. They were too good to wait, other people are not important, rules are not important, fair play is not important...nothing is more important than getting yours ahead of everybody else. Nothing was more important than getting to Spider Man before anybody else did. Long story short, they were taught the golden lesson of the penitentiary, fuck everybody.
Then I thought about these wacko's that enter schools and movie theaters, and start shooting people. I laugh when people are shocked and surprised and they wonder why these things happen. Come closer, I'll explain... It happens because YOU DIDN'T TEACH YOUR FUCKING CHILDREN WELL!!!
You put them on sports teams where "everybody wins" and you teach them to face adversity by being quiet and unassuming. What you've actually done, is set the kid up for hard times because...come close again...LIFE DOESN'T WORK THAT WAY!!! People lose out. Not everybody wins the promotion. Sometimes you need to smack somebody or the world will saddle you with a pussy label. Once you wear that label, somehow people know and you can expect to find shit on your clothes forever.
When you show your kids that courtesy and rules and fair play doesn't exist, you show them that people were meant to be fucked over. So when your treasure picks up a gun one day because he didn't get what he wanted and kills 4 or 5 people, don't cry.
You didn't teach your children well.