I'm always delighted by small children and infants though I’m often annoyed at parents who don't keep better control of them in social environments. I was shopping in my local grocery yesterday afternoon and hadn't realized it was 'bring your mewling child to the store with you' day because I was up to my butt in unhappy young people.
When that happens, I tend to go with the flow and get cranky myself. Trust me, it’s not pretty. Don't get me wrong-I'm not angry with the children. A newborn didn't decide to get in the car and drive to the mall. Mommy did. Or maybe daddy but based on what I saw yesterday, more than likely not, though mommy probably wishes she knew where daddy was.
I don't know when we became a country of the very young and the very old but having been the former and now being the latter let me tell you that all you other age groups, and food groups for that matter, had best start pulling your own weight around here.
We spend way too much money in these parts on diapers and Depends. We built this nation for our children; that's the deal every generation works with the one that follows except now we sold our children and their children out for off-shore bank accounts and left them with no skills, few jobs, and little hope.
We're so busy blaming the New World Order and the changing times that we have no time to look in the mirror and look at ourselves. When Gandhi talked about being the change you want to see in the world, he wasn't talking about looking under the couch cushions in the living room. He was talking about all of us to each of us, for everyone. As someone running for President who’ll never become the President keeps pointing out, “Be the Change before You See the Change.”
If being polite means being less than honest, maybe we should ask one another if that's too high a price to pay for comity. We owe each other the unvarnished truth in order to build a world in which we all want to live. Hurt feelings are a luxury we most certainly can afford if they get us to where we need to be.
-bill kenny
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