If The Other Children Make Fun Of You, Then You Don't Need Them As Friends

Attention readers of OHH - this is a test of the new blog broadcasting system. Please do not adjust your monitors, there is nothing wrong with them, I have just started to change the way I lay out my posts. You may have noticed that, as of a couple of posts ago, I stopped linking to random topics that had very little to do with the word that they were beneath. This has mainly occurred because I wish to distance myself from the style of humour that Family Guy uses as much as possible because, although I may have the insanity of a manatee, I do not have the comedic stylings of one. As a result of this I will, in the coming posts, be carrying out a small experiment in putting occasionally relevant images in the blog itself, to break up the giant wall of text.

It's Almost Impossible To Find A Good Metaphorical Image Of The Berlin Wall Being Knocked Down

Anyway, now that I've got that out of the road, I can start with my actual post. Dear readers, it pains me to inform you that some people should simply not be allowed children. Seriously, when I am the despotic yet fair ruler of the known world, I will take what we have learned from the driver's license system, and adapt it (ironing out a few kinks, and some of the bureaucracy, of course) into a system which requires that people not only need to permit to operate a computer, but also a system where a requisite test would be put into place before people were allowed to procreate - heck, if au pairs need to have (what equates to) a degree to mind a child for a couple of hours a day, then perhaps we'd have less damaged children (and the world's population would be slightly more sustainable, too...)

That's Right, Start Them On KFC Early...Get Them Hooked...That's The Way The Colonel Rolls, Baby...

I am, of course, not imply that parents should be forced to take an intelligence test, per se...well...not a traditional intelligence test, anyway. I am, however, overtly stating that if you can't tell that introducing your child to the wonders of caffeine at age 5, or the joys of ultra-violence in the formative years are bad things, then...well...no baby for you. These are, of course, the more extreme of the realistic (and, I guess, common place) examples of negligent parenting. There are more subtle acts of...shall we say...unintentional cruelty to children that shouldn't particularly be punished with any kind of disciplinary committee, but perhaps a simple psychotropic episode induced in the offending party, causing them to live through the experience they have brought unto their child by their own hand would not go amiss.

No Baby For You!

Of the more recent examples of, uh, "traumatic parenting" that I've seen, I would have to say that the fashion choices that parents seem to be making for their children lately is possibly the most frustrating - and definitely what inspired this blog post. The other day (I say the other day, this was actually before Christmas, but time is relative) I was walking to the bus, via the shopping centre (as is the most efficient path) when I saw a mother who had dressed their son in a pink shirt, with the slogan "Not Afraid To Wear Pink" splashed liberally across the front (I have tried to find a picture of this shirt online, but alas, I cannot...) Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a little boy wearing pink, or a little girl wearing blue, or anything like that - I own a couple of things that go against the "guys should wear this, girls should wear this" rule, but I'm an adult, I picked the clothes for myself, and I'm capable of defending myself against idiots. I don't believe that colours have to have genders assigned to them, and I'm all for breaking the gender roles that society has placed on us - society, on the other hand, I think isn't exactly ready to give up its strong-held beliefs just yet.

Children, it has been shown, form opinions based not only upon what they are experienced to, but also the way their biological imperative works - they need to, in general, fit in. Their brain is, in most cases, wired to do this. Can you imagine what would have happened when this kid got to school? I'm pretty sure that parents should be obliged to do their best to bully-proof their kids. This mother may as well have tied a steak to her son and thrown him into a lion cage - he'd probably come out less scathed.

I Have, On Occasion, Been Called A Wildebeest, But This Is Ridiculous...

There are, of course, other things that parents do to their children (clothing wise) that I consider pretty bad, and The Pink Shirt Issue is just one example of what I would consider...inconsiderate parenting. I am, for instance, not a particularly large fan of those "monkey backpacks" that parents make their children wear, under the guise of their kids having a pretty cute backpack - when really it's painfully obvious to everybody else that the parent isn't secure enough in their ability to keep control of their child in public that they worry their child may run off into a crowd never to be heard from again. Whilst this is a possibility (and I, as a child, was not exempt from running away from Mum once...) there are other options than basically treating your child like their some kind of pet you can with you while you shop. As I said, I only ever got lost from Mum in the shopping centre once - what followed was enough to stop me from ever wandering away again. No, there was no physical punishment. I got the "stranger danger" talk. I got the "you're very special, and someone else might take you away, and we'd never see you again" talk. My parents explained to me, in the pseudo-adult way that they tended to do, that we don't go and hide in the clothes rack - it's dangerous and is not good behaviour. Seriously, how hard is it to talk to your child, rather than resorting to a farcical representation of what your familial relationship should be like.

This Leash Demeans Us Both

The moral of today's story is that, when I was little, I used to think that the correct lyrics to Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac were, in fact: "Can you hear me Colin - That's your name." Of course, I also used to think that it was "You spin me right round baby right round like a wrecker...", so I suppose it's a good thing my parents gave me that "Stranger Danger" talk when they did. You don't get much stranger than Dead or Alive...well...okay you do, given that Safety Dance is now pumping into my ears, I really should have seen that one coming.