When I pick up my sons from school, I often find myself
overwhelmed by the swarming crowds of children pouring from the institution
like locusts descending upon a field of grain. Walking along the sidewalk, I feel as if we have become
engulfed in a river of adolescent fervor and I fear being swept away by the
current of preteen hormone fueled mass.
At that point, I grip my sons’ hands tightly for dear life, which
probably makes them uncomfortable because they are at the cusp of the age when
such things will begin to embarrass them, especially while surrounded by an
ocean of their friends.
But this is a natural reaction to crowds for me. I avoid them whenever possible, but
there’s only so much you can do when your seven and nine year olds need a ride
home, so I tolerate it the best I can.
Over several years, I find that the aspect of this
afterschool madness which has come to bother me the most is not the crowd
itself. I am somewhat capable of
staying in touch with my own childhood (maybe you’ve noticed) and can
understand the excitement of being released from your day long holding cell
while surrounded by a like-minded mob.
What grates on me is the complete disregard of any grown-ups in the
crowd.
I have watched kids shove one another with adults in the
midst of the crowd. Sometimes the
shoving victim runs into one of the parents, including me. Kids will spit, swear and fight all
without the slightest concern that a nearby adult will grab them by the ear and
shout, “Knock it off!”
Perhaps this is an indication that I am getting older. This may be a back-in-my-day moment,
but I don’t think it is. More
likely, I feel it is disgust at the sloppiness of the current generation’s
misbehavior.
As a young boy, I took great pains to conceal my worst side
from the prying eyes of authority figures. Even if I didn’t know who the hell the adult was, there was
the underlying concern that the adult social network (which had nothing to do
with the Facebook back then, but I believed, and still believe, involves telepathy
to a certain degree) would eventually find a way to relay the information to an
adult that would justly punish me.
In fact, half the challenge and thrill of misbehaving was keeping any
grown-up from finding out.
The brazen attitude of the kids whose actions I am subjected
to witnessing around my kids’ school is then interpreted by me as a lack of
respect for my position as an adult.
An overheard conversation by two seventh graders the other day may have
been the last straw.
The chubby one, whose eyes seemed nearly swollen shut from
his dietary habits, was explaining something to the shorter one who, to his
credit, seemed genuinely uncomfortable by the topic of conversation. They both spoke far too loudly about it
in the presence of adults obviously waiting nearby for class to let out.
“No, they’re not the same,” said chubster as they ventured
within earshot of me.
“What’s the difference?” asked the other boy.
“Doggy-style is when they’re on their knees,” he
elaborated. “The wheelbarrow is
when you pick up her legs.”
“Um, ok,” the other verbally fidgeted, “that’s gross.”
It took every ounce of control that I possessed to keep
myself from leaping out of the car that I had peacefully been playing Words
with Friends in and grabbing the two of them by their shirt collars. If I’d had a whistle, it would have
been blown. Had I a red card, I
would have held it aloft and ejected the both of them. At the very least, I wanted to rap
their knuckles and insist that they apologize to all of adulthood (to the
lovely ladies in particular) for their indiscretions.
Instead, after running through the potential legal ramifications
in my head, I decided not to lay a hand on either of the offenders. It has become obvious that some parents
are not teaching their kids the important lessons of adolescence. When I see them lacking, it just is not
my place to try and educate them.
All I can to is hope to teach my own sons better values.
Amateurs.
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