Adult Bullies, The Worst Bully Of All!!!

What in the name of all hell is wrong with people these days?   I mean seriously.  I’ve been a parent for a long ass time, I mean like in the trenches for 20+ years, our kids span the gauntlet in age from 1-20!  I’ve been a parent so long that I’ve been parenting for longer than I’ve not been parenting!  And over these years the climate, the way people see kids, has changed.  Nowadays, as a kid, you can’t walk down the street, you can’t go to the park, hell, you can’t go to the pool without being hollered and screamed at. These places, should be spots where kids can go to town being a kid. This is where parents should be able to relax and smile when their squeal loving little girl goes scream crazy or when their rough and tumble boys wrestle. There are more places that are innapropriate for kids to be kids than there are appropriate so for the love of all that’s holy you would think people would let kids have the outdoor spaces to be wild?

But, oh no! Nowadays adults, miserable, life hating adults, want to claim all of the world as their domain. Kids are deemed annoying, they are viewed as nuisances, and quite frankly people don’t want to deal with them and so they treat them like crap and don’t want to see them or hear them and so they are slowly claiming every domain on the earth as theirs.  I think everyone is annoying as heck, but I’m expected to deal with everyone else’s shite and treat people “the way I want to be treated”.  Right?  But when it comes to treating children a certain way, it’s no holds barre.  It’s a smorgasboarde.  No-one feels held to a a certain standard of etiquette.  It’s anarchy for kids everywhere!

Are you aware of how many crabby, mentally old, mean spirited people there are who inhabit this earth?  These people spend their days fully immersed in the belief that they have the right to not be annoyed and annihilate those short people that dare.  And heaven help you if you are a child who is happy, active, fun loving … you are target practice.  And I’m not talking about people who are just having a bad moment or even a bad day, we’ve all been there, it’s allowed, I’m the first one to acknowledge that I’m a hothead, I can fly off the handle but there is a growing trend amongst adults to simply treat kids like the lowest scum on earth. And, I’m fully aware there are obnoxious kids, so I’m not talking about your hell raising children who have no concept of approriate behavior either  … have at them, they obviously don’t get it from home. I’m talking about children who are simply being children — imperfect little human beings who are still learning the ropes, who are still learning to control themselves and who still have a passion for fun living, who still wake up excited for another day. I’m talking about happy, well adjusted playful children. You used to be one, not that long ago!!

What happened in their lives that turned them into a bitter individual? What happened in their lives that makes them resent children? And what the hell makes them think they have the right to treat kids with such disdain? Such disrespect? These people never ever would dare treat other adults in the same manner they treat kids! You never ever see old crabby people yelling and disrespecting other adults, telling them to “shut up” or to stop enjoying themselves. Case in point.  We are at the pool.  For those of you that don’t know, the pool has water in it that is displaced when children, well, when people in general, jump in said pool or kick their feet in said pool … to make a long story short, water splashes and quite typically goes in the air and makes people get wet.  In fact, when in any sort of water, one might make the reasonable assumption that getting wet is inevitable.  Ok, so when you are an old biddy (male or female) and you choose, CHOOSE, to hang out in the shallow end of the pool where young (read, short) children are playing and, yes, splashing, you must not mind or be bothered by it, correct?  Oh heck no.  These men and women scream like bloody murder victims at the kids.

“Hey!  HEY! HEY! HEEEYYYYYYY! HEY YOU! Knock it off.  You have the whole pool to play in.  HEEEEEYYYYYY KID!  Go somewhere else NOOOOWWWW!”  This really happened. I’m not kidding you. I saw it with my own eyes. I was sitting right there.  And when I spoke up and asked them to talk to my kids with a little respect they were flabbergasted, completely speechless, and fully embarrassed.  They didn’t realize their mom was around.  They didn’t think they’d be called out because polite children are taught to smile and respect their elders.  This is a classic case of bullying … this is cowardness! This is infuriating!

Seriously, go pick on someone your own size or at the very least from your own generation! Have you ever in your life had an adult, “HEYYYYYYYY” you?  Tell you to get lost?  Me neither.  In fact, I’ve never in my life, not in my childhood or in my adult life been yelled at in a pool or at a playground or anywhere else conscientious mothers take their kids to drain out the energy they horde.  These people are cowards, they prey on kids.  And my experiences aren’t simply little isolated ones either.  There’s an old guy who is a regular at the Hot Springs Pool in Glenwood Springs, CO.  He’s quite the entitled prick.  He’s well known all over town for driving this little sports car and he parks it wherever the hell he pleases, be it legal or not, because he believes he’s special.  I caught him hollering at my boys because they were throwing a pool ball, soft lil ball, and it dropped about 3′ in front of him.  By his own admission it didn’t hit him, but the possibility remained that it could.  He was nearly hoarse from screaming when I got to him.  A lot of heads turned, but no-one said anything either from shock or fear, I don’t know.  But, apparently he’s “damaged” (from screaming probably) and if that ball had hit him he’d be back in the hospital for months.  Huh?  The world outside the pool is 10 gazillion times more dangerous… What an imp (otent jerk)!

Then there were the two mid-40’s dudes who told Dally if he ran into him he’d “break” his shoulder. Not if he ran into him “again”, but just simply putting it out there that if Dally ran into him, he’d break his shoulder.   His shoulder.  Not his face, not his legs, but his shoulder.  A little PSA for Dally?  How weird is that?  And no, I didn’t go find him because my kids are cool, they don’t come running to find me when some bully, albeit some middle aged loser in this case, messes with them.  They’ve got each other, it was an afterthought when they did tell me!  But, I guarantee that if Dan were at the pool playing and some lame ass said he’d break his shoulder, that’s a fight.  But, the dude wouldn’t ever have dared, ever, because he knows he wouldn’t get away with it!  Somewhere along the way people have gotten the idea that it’s ok to treat kids really really REALLY badly.  There is no modicum of respect.  

I’d like to try an experiment some day.  Attach little mini Go-Pros on a bunch of kids and send them off on their day.  I think, heck, I know, we’d be floored by the way teachers, coaches, bus drivers, store employees, drivers, other parents, and everyone our kids meet during a normal day talk to our kids. I think the world would be shocked!  I see it first hand.  I see it everywhere.  People no longer look at kids as younger versions of themselves.  Instead, today kids annoy adults. just by being.  Adults have forgotten what it is like to be young and carefree and happy and excited about every minute of every day.  For children the possibilities are endless.  Adults are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders … they can’t smile, they can’t laugh, they can’t embrace the present or the future and so they are angry and instead of changing the world they live in, instead of changing their own lives they choose to try to make everyone else change and they focus all their angst on on unsuspecting kids.

Ask yourself the last time you saw some adult holler at another for talking loudly in a Starbucks line.  When was the last time you as an adult were scolded for playing wildly with your kids on the playground? Or for pushing your son into the pool?  Or climbing up the slide backwards? (What is up with this climbing the slide backwards business?  People are flipping out nationwide, it’s an epidemic) I can tell you I’ve never been screamed at by an adult in my adult life. I pity the fool who attempts it on me!  As an adult you would for sure, at the very least, talk some trash, right?  And this knowledge is what keeps adults in check.  Almost makes me want to teach my kids to flip the heck out on crazy people … almost, but not quite.  🙂

But I do think we need to teach the old fogies to chill OUT.  They need to learn the age-old lesson that Dan teaches our kids and the lesson with which he schools old ladies like the ones in the above story.  The lesson is this … you don’t have the right to not be annoyed. End of lecture.  It’s that simple.  You don’t have the right to not be annoyed.  Repeat as often as necessary.  Email this premise to all your friends.  Purchase billboards.   Ingrain this into your heads people and teach this to your children so there is not another generation that believes they are God’s gift to the earth and that their wants surpass those of everyone else around them.

We all have equal rights to be on this earth and if you are bothered by someone who is simply being annoying you should remove yourself from the annoyance!  Obviously different if the kids are being unruly or disrespectful, but if you are in the kiddie part of the pool and getting splashed by kids, you don’t have the right to tell them to go elsewhere!  You should go elsewhere.  You should either learn to tolerate minor annoyances or get the hell out of society.  Children are people, they deserve the exact same respect you would give an adult and if you find yourself being one of those people who can’t keep their mouths shut and you pick on small children … you are nothing more than a bully, a coward!  Get a life!

And by get a life I mean find some happiness, a place to hang your hat. Happy people can change the world! Happy people make other people happy. Happy people enhance the lives of those they encounter. Miserable people spread misery. What’s your legacy going to be?