Captain’s Log 5,528
3,500 people came through the museum yesterday. What a nightmare! Spring break. Once again, it was the parents who were assholes. One cannot blame the child if the parent merely looks the other way when a curious little one pops the top off a stanchion head. Worse yet when the parent argues that there is nothing wrong when his child smacks a two million dollar car with a large lollipop.
The worst groups are the spring break “camps” run by the YMCA. Those are merely places to warehouse kids while the parents work. Dragging kids around on field trips every day is merely expensive babysitting. The counselors have absolutely no control over the kids and they don’t WANT to have control. They want to collect their minimum wage at the end of the week and call it good.
And it isn’t just the kids who get into trouble. We have had to ask adults to not sit in cars or play with the gearshifts, etc. We found someone trying to unbuckle the hood of this car.
Asshat actually stepped over the chain and into the display area….and actually started unclipping the hood buckle. What can I say?
Waldo stopped by too yesterday.
Can you see him?
It should be quieter and nicer today.
Life Aboard the HMS Pie Rat 
Unbuckle the hood? That’s so plebeian of him! He needs to take the cap off the gearshift! Loser. lol (kidding, well, no. I want to LAY on the car like Tawny Kataen did w/ the jaguars in the White Snake video!)
Come over and I will arrange for you to lay on our Jaguar. That sounds twisted out of context, doesn’t it?
I think it’d be a life-changing experience. You do realize, however, that if I do come out to CA, the odds of me returning to Dirty Jersey are less than zero?
Sounds like pretty good odds to me.
I am so sorry. Personally I have turned into a curmudgeon with things like this.
I did.
Glad to see you survived a raid by Ghengis Khan and his troops yesterday.
I’ve said for a long time that we’ve short-changed our kids for the past couple of generations. Children now know parents only as those two-legged creatures staggering home in a fog of exhaustion. Meals are fast-food or worse. There’s no guidance, no moral compass, reflecting in the out-of-control situations like you described at the museum. The families with a stay-at-home mom tend to be upper-income families only, and I’m convinced that’s an important factor in the growing gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.
*Stepping down from soapbox*
I like your soapbox!
Parenting is not at all what it used to be. Children run their household and get unlimited “get out of jail free” cards too. It’s scary to think that what is going on now is only going to get worse. No respect for anyone else is the norm.
Most true. Makes me sad.
I was standing on a street corner yesterday, watching the traffic (don’t ask; I’ll tell y’all eventually), and saw kids chasing footballs and, in one case, actually lying in the street. He sat up when a car appeared, but the car had to steer around him.
There are plenty of parents who never should have been allowed to have kids. No one will ever stop them, because they’ll still be arguing about whether to have background checks for anything else.
It is really not the same as it once was.
Parenting in this century ain’t what it used to be. When I was a kid, if I even looked at my mother or stepfather the wrong way, I felt a shoe bouncing off the side of my head. Kids today have no respect for anything except their cell phones. And I blame it on their parents’ inability and unwillingness to engage with their kids. The family structure we once knew is gone forever. Yes, you could call me an old fuddy-duddy, but in some instances, old-fashioned is better than newfangled.
Daniel, what will be your comment when you meet a well-behaved child whose parents are the same gender? And I believe I am an older fuddy-duddy than you, just a logical one.
Actually, I take no issue with same-sex marriages. In fact, many of my closest friends are gay. So, you’re making an incorrect assumption.
You’re right. It was illogical. Not all people who call themselves fuddy-duddies are against same-sex marriages. I was in a mode, having just had a “conversation” about that.
What an interesting comment thread! I love dialogue.
You haven’t lived until you catch me in one of my “modes”! Ask Poolagirl! No harm, no foul. 🙂
Oh! I love this game! Find the Asshat!
Pretty easy to spot on a Free Tuesday.