I’ll Raise My Own Kids, Thanks

I am really proud to be a parent.  I am also thankful that we were able to get models that seem to function properly – perhaps even slightly better than some of the ones we run into in our daily lives.  I’d like to take sole credit for the fact that my 3 year old knows what the word “persnickety” means and can use it in a sentence, but all the credit goes to his nimble little brain.  Everything sticks in there like glue.  On occasion, they will throw a fit in the supermarket and force me to look like an asshole and yell at them in that whisper-scream voice that I didn’t know I had until I became a dad.  People usually just shake their head and avoid eye contact.  Every once in a while somebody will step up and say something:

1)  One time my wife and kids were at a store while I was at work.  The boy (3) walked next to his mother while the girl (1.5) rode in the seat in the cart.  Apparently, the boy got a little stir crazy and strayed away from the cart to go and look at something on the shelves.  After my wife said his name twice to try to get him to come back to the cart, some snotty bitch said, “You’re gonna have to go and get him…that’s what you get for letting him down like that.”  My wife ignored the Target whore, said the kid’s name one more time and he returned to her side.

2)  My entire family walked into Sam’s Club for the purpose of procuring obscene amounts of paper towels and toilet paper (the only reason to go to Sam’s Club).  My wife clicked the girl’s carrier (she was only a few months old) into the cart while I walked with the boy on my shoulders.  It was clear that I had a strong grip on both of the boy’s ankles and I wasn’t about to let anything happen to him.  Of course, that didn’t stop a 196 pound, dentally challenged, female-esque employee from staggering up to me and slurring in a thick mizz-err-uh accent, “Is that the same boy what fell off his daddy’s shoulders and hit his head on this concrete floor last month?”  I think the lady was trying to use reverse psychology or some shit on me…Or maybe it was the best way she could think of to tell me that she thought what I was doing was dangerous.  My initial mental response was to calmly put the boy down and then slam the woman’s head repeatedly into the concrete floor that she was so fucking worried about and try to fashion her haggard face back into something that resembles a woman.  Fortunately, I was able to keep my criminal record clean and just walk away from the bitch-thing without saying a word.

3)  One night my wife went to work and forgot something at home.  I can’t remember what she had forgotten, but it was important enough that I had to pack up the kid (the girl wasn’t born yet and the boy was still tiny) and go deliver it to her work.  As I hurried into the building and toward the elevator, some lady stopped me so that she could inform me that the carrier was moving back and forth too quickly and “I was going to hurt it if I wasn’t careful”.  I gave her the bitch-this-is-my-kid-and-I-happen-to-know-that-he-likes-this-so-why-don’t-you-mind-your-own-fucking-business-before-I-take-off- my-belt-and-choke-you-to-death-with-it look and growled, “Thanks”.

Unless I am beating the shit out of them, or dangling them off a cliff while loudly proclaiming that I am the lizard king – I am their father and I know what is best for my own kids.  Stay the hell out of it and shut the hell up.  

However, there is a time for intervention…last night I walked into the gas station to pay for my fuel purchase and encountered two double-morbidly obese (meaning that they were both 200lbs overweight) women behind the counter.  This was all I heard,”I know what you’re talking about.  This bitch told me I shouldn’t hit her and I got right up in the bitch’s face and said, ‘you want some of this bitch?  ‘Cause I can hit you instead!  Why don’t I stay here and continue to teach my child and you go call DFS (County Division of Family Services), we’ll wait here for you.  Or do you want me to dial?  That’s what I thought.  Hmn'”  

Classy.  She’s going to teach that kid to become an alcoholic roofer.  The fact that she knows who DFS is tells me that she’s talked to them before.  I quietly paid for the gas and considered whether or not a good beating from the Mobil Oil Corporation would make this lady any better at providing customer service.

Here’s the rule:  Don’t intervene in the lives of strangers.  If a kid is being really hurt by anybody, call the cops.  Otherwise, shut up.  Like my fourth grade teacher said, “If everybody worries about themselves, we won’t have to worry about anybody else.”  Strange that I remembered that…