KARL D. writes:

Yesterday morning, I decided to go out to a local cafe for a late breakfast. My intention was to have a peaceful bite while reading a guidebook for a vacation I am taking shortly. Big mistake. I forgot it was Sunday which means that the place would be packed with families with young children, which is understandable. What eventually made me flee, however, was the way these parents simply let their children run wild and would themselves do things that my parents would never have dreamed of allowing.

One couple came in whom you could tell were older hipsters who just gave off a mean and snobby vibe. She was around 43 and he in his late 50s. Their child was a boy of about three years old. While they waited for their order (to go) the father allowed the child to walk all over the top of an empty table in filthy boots. The mother watched on as if it were completely normal while the teenaged staff said nothing.

Next there was a couple in their mid thirties sitting next to me with two children: a boy of about two and a girl of about four. The little boy kept screaming that scream that goes right through your head like an ice pick. The parents not only did not take him outside to try and quiet him down, but just let him keep screaming as if it were the most natural thing in the world. The little girl meanwhile was smushing her food onto her seat and the table (which the parents didn’t bother trying to clean up) and began crawling around on the floor making gibberish sounds that a two year old would make. At first I thought she was autistic or something but I don’t think she was as she would speak entire sentences between her animalistic sounds. As soon as they left two more couples came in: An East Asian woman and white male and an Indian woman and a white male, both with their mixed children. I finally had to leave as I couldn’t concentrate on my book anymore. Between the horribly behaved children, the parents’ indifference and the demographic changes which all are the new “normal,” it was simply too much to bear.

— Comments —

Terry Morris writes:

Lucky for Karl D. these “parents” apparently believe in contraception, and/or, sterilization after one or two children. Okay, okay, bad joke.

I’ve probably mentioned before that my wife and I schedule our grocery shopping and such after the first week of every month because of all the riff-raff I call “foodstampers,” whose children are the worst behaved, ill mannered little creatures that you can imagine. We have learned, in addition, that their parents are apt to say just about anything that crosses their mind, never mind others are within earshot. Invariably a number of them are talking on their cell phones while their children are given free rein, and the topics of conversation and language used is almost always, well, inapproriate, to put it mildly. We find it, therefore, best to just avoid those places like the plague on those days.

One other thing: decent, modest, God-fearing women are perhaps the lovliest creatures on earth, and make the best of men seem like soulless barbarians. The exact opposite seems to be the case as well. And that’s no joke.

Laura writes:

Your joke is more relevant than you seem to realize. If these people had more children, they (the children) would probably be better behaved because their parents would be forced to discipline them.

Secondly, isn’t it uncharitable to call the poor “riff-raff” and don’t you expect to find misbehavior among the poor? After all, that’s probably why they are poor. It seems they are less to blame than the well-off who set such low standards.

John Purdy writes:

I have observed similar behaviour. I have known more than a few parents who, despite being decent and even moderately conservative people, simply cannot say “no” to their children. This has led to their sons, more often than their daughters, to becoming layabout wastrels. It seems like girls will do as they’re told even in the absence of strong guidance (but not always). Boys need more leadership and it is nowhere available. This just one more liberal tendency that points to potentially gloomy future.

Terry Morris writes:

“Isn’t it uncharitable to call the poor “riff-raff” …?”

No, I wasn’t being particularly uncharitable towards them in my opinion, and here’s why: in the first place a high percentage of these people aren’t any worse off than I am, economically, when you boil it all down. They may not be as capable (or willing) as I am of properly managing their resources, but that’s a separate issue than what I’m talking about. So it’s not like I’m unsympathetic to their plight. (I can’t exactly prove that that’s the case, so you’ll just have to take me at my word.) Second, I know quite a lot of people both of us would regard as “poor” who wouldn’t think of behaving the way I described in private, much less in public. Third, it’s been my experience that most of the people I describe know that their behavior in public is offensive to decent people, and that they really should be more respectful towards others; that they act the way they do, at least in part, because they want to be offensive towards us (freeeedom!, and all that). If I’m right about that, the most “charitable” (towards everyone) thing I can think of to call them is riff-raff. I haven’t denied their humanity in referring to them that way, after all, I have asserted it … along with the duties that attend it.

Do I expect them to misbehave? Yes and no. I expect them to behave badly for the reasons aforesaid, including (your reason) that they’re held to low standards by the more affluent; I expect them to behave in a way (at least in public) that doesn’t purposely offend and disgust decent people because that’s the least they can do as fellow human beings.

P.S. No, it didn’t escape me how truthful my joke was/is. I do have eight children, after all. :-)

Please follow and like us: