And a Brief Comment on Other People's Children

Okay, the Mardi Gras pictures are below, but I wanted to go on a rant about poorly disciplined children. We were at Disney last week (which Lucas declares is full of crying babies in strollers smelling of poopy diapers), and were watching a magician on the Boardwalk. He was being "assisted" by 2 or 3 little girls who reported that they were 5-8 years old. It was all cute at first, the way they yelled at him when he misstated their ages, but then I started thinking that they weren't being very respectful by interrupting him, and where were their parents? Kate, the main assistant, even threw his props at him at one point, instead of handing them to him like he asked. He just kept smiling and going on, and she gave him a big hug at the end of the show. How precious!

Then the next magician started up, and he was a wisecracking smart-aleck who was very funny. He called Lucas up to do a trick and put a magic hat on him, which ended up being a toilet plunger in disguise. So Lucas has no clue, but the audience is now laughing, and Kate starts screaming to Lucas that he has a plunger on his head. The guy actually told her to back up and sit down, then said this was why animals ate their young, and finally asked if her parents were anywhere around. When she yelled out, "This magic show stinks!" he announced that he wouldn't be talked to like that by a child, and promptly packed the show up.

We hung around to see if her parents would show up and make her apologize to him, but all we saw was that she ran to some adults and got a big hug for the humiliation she apparently went through.

This was followed by dinner, where 2 girls who were way old enough to know better were screaming (seriously - high-pitched screaming) to get their mom's attention. She was reading the wine bottle and ignoring them, so one started pounding her on the chest. I was getting ready to open a can of whoop-ass (that may be a hick term too - no, more redneck...I come from a mixed family) but settled for glaring at them...unnoticed, of course.

So I don't know how you were raised, but we sat at the table quietly unless the conversation involved us. It was a routine occurrence for people to stop by our table and tell my parents what well-behaved children we were (we knew the fear of the belt back then). I remember 2 times it didn't happen. The first time we were at a different table than the folks and my brother heated up a butter knife over the candle, then touched my sister's hand just to see what would happen. Well, no compliments happened after the screaming stopped, that's for sure. The second time, we were teenagers and my dad was cutting up with us till my mother threatened to go sit in the car if we didn't behave. So that was his fault, really.

Well, that's all I have to say about that. I apologize in advance if you resemble this remark.