Foo.That's really all I have to say about it. It was crazy. Walking to math section today reminded me of this event that took place about a month ago. I was walking to class. It was a fairly nice day. Wind was blowing. Warm. Feeling pretty happy. I saw a child playing on the sidewalk. He was playing with something he found on the ground. A rock perhaps? I dunno. But he was playing, as children often (and ought to) do. And he was not listening to his mother (or at least I assume that it was his mother), as children often (and will continue to) do.
And his mother was getting angry at him. Of course he might have been pissing her off before the point at which I saw them, but at that moment, as I was approaching them, she looked at him, pulling him up off the ground and told him to "Get the hell over here." The kid was no more that four or five years old. Completely understandable that the mother was getting upset. The language, however, seemes a little harsh to me.
And I suppose that's my problem. I've been writing this, thinking about how awful it was that this woman was talking to her child like that. Thinking how my mother would have never talked to me like that. And I realized that if I had been in the same situation, I don't know what I would have said. Am I just over reacting? Was this a perfectly normal reaction for this woman to have? Am I completely out of line for thinking this? I don't know. I don't know if the problem here is that I've never had to be in a situation like this, or if this woman really was out of line in talking to her child like that.
"Hell" is not a particularly pleasant word, but it's not the most evil either. I suppose the problem I had in this case is that it made me realize that ... I don't know what it made me realize. If we talk to our children in this way when they're this young, then what are they going to turn out like when they get older. Are they going to talk like this?
I suppose my issue here is what the future is going to hold for society. It'll all turn out in the end I suppose, and this happens every generation, but I just can't see that everything's going to be okay, given the state of the children in today's society. Everything's all wacky. Parents leave their kids all day alone while they're at work. The kids have to fend for themselves after school. I suppose I just led a sheltered childhood, but I really wonder about the future of this society. Whether it'll survive on its own, or whether it's going to collapse on itself.
Every generation has its problems. Every generation comes out okay. It's a wonder to me that everything turns out okay in the end.
Foo.
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