Lori and I were headed to town this morning to do some shopping. Since we used the phrase "to town" about 10 times, I started thinking about the song Don't Take Your Guns To Town. I sang it in what was I'm sure an incredibly irritating way for about five minutes, then said idly to Lori, "Why didn't Bill's mom just forbid him to take the guns to town? Like, "Bill, give me the goddamn guns. When you get home from town I'll give them back."
Lori said that's not how modern mother's handle things. Oh...when we want to make fun of new-age permissive mothers, we refer to their child as "Hunter", because that was the name of the most obnoxious child we ever had the misfortune of seeing throw a fit in public. We know his name because his mother was using it repeatedly while trying to negotiate with the little bastard.
"Hunter, if you stop screaming I'll take you for ice cream. Hunter...come on now. People are staring. Hunter, I know you're upset, but we talk about our feelings, we don't raise our voices."
My parenting strategy with Hunter would have been something like dragging Hunter into a quiet spot and looking him in the eye with my Mean Mommy face. Then I would say, "Hunter, if you don't knock that shit off right now, I'll take you out to the car and spank you 'til you're dead. If you survive, you won't be going to the store again until you're 18 and you're leaving for college. Knock it off."
And Hunter would believe me, because I had exactly that moment one time each with all three of my kids, and they knew I'm crazy and I don't make idle threats. So here's Bill's mother, pleading with Bill not to take his guns to town, using the Hunter Method of conflict resolution: negotiating with her child when he's being a moron.
"Bill, please...please don't take your guns to town. Please. Leave your guns at home, Bill."
And Bill, playing the role of Hunter, does it anyway. Now we know what happens next: Bill takes the guns to town, gets into a bar fight and gets killed. Using the Hunter Method of parenting, Bill's mom rationalizes Bill's incredibly stupid decision to take the guns to town by crying, "Bill was a good boy! He never meant to hurt anyone!", and then suing Smith & Wesson.
This why the human race is headed for extinction. It's not global warming that will eventually kill us, it's the Hunter Method of bad parenting.
"Hunter, honey... do you think it's a very good idea to take your guns to town? If you don't take your guns to town, we'll go for ice cream later. Hunter, in this family we don't take guns to town, we talk about our problems."
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4 comments:
The most egregious example of the Hunter Method I've personally witnessed happened at a birthday party for my employers over-protected, undisciplined two year old, attended by the spoiled rotten offspring of a dozen other doctors and their vapid mothers:
Hunter (because that's what we call him) had just purposely emptied the contents of his punch glass (bright red) on the hostesses white plush wall-to-wall carpeting. The same carpeting she had once asked me not to let my toddler crawl on "because he might drool."
"Hunter! Oh, honey! Why would you do that to Auntie Lynn's rug? Are you upset about something?? Remember, Hunter, we're here for Wyoming's birthday (because naming your child for states is also stupid). We're sharing and caring!"
Yes. She really did say "sharing and caring" instead of, "What the hell do you think you're doing!? We're leaving now, and when we get home you won't be able to sit down for a week! You stand there and think about that while I write Auntie Lynn a check to get her god-damn carpet cleaned, and it's coming out of your college fund. You may not live to see first grade anyway."
Funny, but Miss A and I were just talking yesterday about how degraded the gene pool has become.
You're right about the extinction being caused by bad parenting.
And I find the older I get, the less tolerance I have for idiots raising children. I have to restrain myself from actually making comments to these people in public about how badly they and their children are behaving.
I totally agree with your parenting method. I have said on more than one occassion, "If you do that, I will break you in half." And because they know I'm a bit on the crazy side, they halfway believe me. The Mom-look helps too. The funniest thing is that my "Knock it off" can actually freeze grown men in their tracks at the grocery store. They must have had good Mommas.
You've hit the nail on the head.
There's an entire generation (maybe 2) that have an enormous sense of entitlement. 'i want what i want when i want it' is apparently the mantra of these kids & young adults. Nobody has ever said no to them, and nobody has ever taught them that there are consequences for every action - toss the stone into the pond & there are always far-reaching ripples.
The world is full of Hunters and his friends.
I really don't think they'll ever learn to be responsible, self-reliant adults. Eventually, they'll come to their parents, completely pissed off, and say 'why the fuck didn't you tell me any of this shit?'
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