( #bostoncommon, #lazyparents, #lazy )
Before I start pissing on seemingly hard working, “in-over-their-heads” parents, I want to acknowledge the people who do it right. It is hard to have to constantly discipline your kid to make sure they grow up right. I see my poor cousins and friends running after their kids ensuring they don’t set a precedent or standard where the little ones can get away with shit. It is exhausting to watch them, I can’t imagine what it is like to be them 24×7. Because of them, I see such good parenting and vigilance to prevent “asshole kid syndrome”, that I have little tolerance for lazy parents.
When we were in Boston, my wife nagged me to go to Boston Common to take a picture on the “Make Way for the Ducklings” statues. She took pictures at the same statues when she was little with her cousins and sisters and thought it would be funny to send a picture of herself sitting on them. Once we found it, there were (naturally) kids sitting on the ducks and parents taking pictures. We waited a few minutes and it started to clear out… except for one little girl.
As she sat on the “mother duck” (of course the one my wife wanted to take a picture on), the child’s mother sat on a bench half-heartedly yelling for her to “come back”. She didn’t. We decided to walk around a bit, but could still see the little girl hanging on the statue while other people tried to take pictures of their children, all the while, the mother yelling and not getting off her fat ass to do something about it. Twenty minutes later, she was still there, the mother still sitting down, while the child ruined dozens of pictures for other people (she kept getting in the pictures).
Two things pissed me off about the situation:
One: The mother obviously knew people were trying to take pictures and didn’t get a shit about her child ruining other people’s photos (and also expecting a 2-3 year old to understand the situation and just listen).
Two: I could just imagine my cousin Anthony (or Heather) in that situation, and that poor bastard wouldn’t allow himself to sit down for 5 seconds while that was going on. Why should that bitch be allow to sit down and they can’t?
My wife never did get to take that picture…
