Who Sees You?
So, yesterday afternoon I had to go to one of my least favorite places in the world: Wal-Mart. Why do I go, if I don’t like it? Well, unfortunately they are cheaper than many places and they are one-stop. I hate shopping of any kind, so anything that keeps me from going to several stores gets my business. What I don’t like about Wal-Mart is how they run the little guy out of communities and treat their workers like shit. I also hate how crowded their stores are. Crowded with merchandise. I mean, how many varieties of lotion and cheese puffs do you need anyway? There should be no more than three types of anything. Cheap, cheaper, and cheapest. That’s it.
This time of year it is even worse. The aisle in Wal-Mart are already only barely wide enough to move your cart through when you’re in the store with only five other customers at two a.m. But go to a Wal-Mart three weeks before Christmas in the middle of a Saturday afternoon? Crazy. I should have known better. Hell, I do know better, but I did it anyway. The other problem with Wal-Mart…or any kind of shopping during the holidays is that everybody seems to drag their children along with them. Actually, it’s more like the other way around.. Maybe it’s because I am getting older, but it seems like to me that kids control the parents these days. Parents who have this problem a have brought it on themselves. How? Threats. Threats with no follow through.
While I was standing about tenth in one of the twenty-some odd check out lines, I watched a monster barely four feet tall batter her mother with one of those long ropes of bubble gum. She flogged the woman’s thick thighs again and again, no doubt raising welts and bruises under her dingy pink sweat pants. Instead of ripping the weapon out of the princesses stubby fists and tossing it back on the impulse buy shelf, she looked down at the girl and warned,” You quit it or else Santa Claus won’t bring you toys for Christmas. When all your friends get toys on Christmas and you don’t, they’ll know you have been bad.”
The child calmed down…for a moment. But soon, she was as bored as the dozens of others of us waiting to just pay and get the hell out, and renewed her attacks. That’s when I would have just abandoned the cart filled with Barbie and other goodies and marched my kid out to the car and home. Then she might believe that the Christmas well is gonna be a little dry this year. Instead, the mother just heaved a sigh and tried to bribe her spawn with the jolly fat man once again. “He sees you,” she pleaded.
I’m sure parents everywhere are exploiting the “he making a list and checking it twice,” legend to keep their kids in line up until the 25th. But it made me wonder what methods do they use the rest of the year. This whole Santa Claus is watching thing only has any punch maybe from November 1st on. Much earlier than that and almost any kid can figure out he’s got about six weeks to make good.
So what do weary moms and dads do for the first ten months of the year? Do they play the whole deck of holiday icon cards? Easter is probably an easy bribe. Be good or the Easter Bunny won’t bring you chocolate eggs and marshmallow chicks pumped with dye. Bonus if it’s one of those years where Easter falls late. More weeks to invoke the Bunny. Hardcore parents could even scare their brats into submission by warning that Christ goes back on the cross unless little boys and girls behave.
In a way the Christians have it over on others when it comes to disciplining. With the modern versions of Christmas and Easter built around commercialism and mass consumption, they have major tools at their disposal. “Hit your sister? That’s one less Cadbury Egg, young man.” “Didn’t do the dishes and take out the trash? Then I guess the elves can clock out early. The number of orders for X-Boxes just went down.”
I guess the non-Christians and Christians at other times of the year make more use of the lesser threats from the holiday deck. I just wonder how effective you can be with, “One more outburst from you, Cassidy, and civil rights will only be a dream again,” on MLK Day. And who is seeing you when you’re sleeping and knows when you’re awake in those weeks before Independence Day? The ghost of Thomas Jefferson, who brings all good boys and girls over-grilled burgers and tepid sun-warmed potato salad?”
How about St. Patrick’s Day? Is there any weight to the threat that the leprechuans will turn you permanently green from alcohol poisioning. What can parents count on Betsy Ross, Christopher Columbus, and the Baby New Year to do to get their backs? Then there’s August. There are no holidays in August. I guess parents hope that a promise of a visit from John L. Lewis on Labor Day will hold the kids off until September. I guess that makes sense. Relationships between parents and kids are more and more like union negotions everyday.
December 4th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
“Bribe her spawn!” I love it!
My mother didn’t calm us down with myths of any holiday. Pure discipline I tell you. “If you don’t settle your ass down, I am going to take you out to the car and beat your ass!” That was the nice part. Second time it was the humilation tactic. “Boy, if you don’t mind me, I will spank your ass right here in this damn store in front of everybody” Of course now adays they don’t believe in spanking or such. Will get child services called on you quicker than shit, cause people aren’t minding their own business.
My sister got confronted in the store by a lady in the check out lane, cause my sister had spanked my nephew for acting up. My sister told her to mind her own damn business, this is my kid.
December 4th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
Kids today! I sound more and more like my dad all the time. “You hurt Jesus when you do that, He goes right back on the cross!” — That’s funny, I don’t care who you are!
Goddamn kids today . . .
December 4th, 2005 at 11:27 pm
funny post. funny ending.
December 5th, 2005 at 8:06 am
And still I wonder why I wish I had kids?!?!?! Sometimes I wonder if they’re worth it in the end. I rarely have time or patience for adle-brained adults. Kids are so cute when they’re younger, then they grow up!
December 5th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
I haven’t been into Walmart in forever. The aisles are too crowded. The people are too rude. The company policies are too anti-worker for my taste too. It is reasurring to see that ALL Walmarts are the same.
December 5th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
Yeah,
My nieces and nephews seem to get away with murder and all my siblings say , “They’re my kids, I’ll raise them the way I want to.” Luckily for me, those same kids are afraid of Uncle Jim’s Wrath. I guess my threats sound more menacing.
Oh, I do have two well behaved nieces, but their father is a Lt. Colonel. Think that has anything to do with it?
December 5th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
When I see kids being brats it makes me glad I never had any. Guess someone has to.
December 5th, 2005 at 4:19 pm
God, I am so fortunate! I have worked in social work and pediatric nursing before settling in one of the midwest’s largest county ERs. Working with fucked up families, working with underprivilaged who think the world owes them….I still believe in the foundation of good parenting. Sure my niece cries occasionally but so far, she has manners and discipline which we all have instilled in her.
Sometimes, parents deserve the whippings with the rope of candy…if they would only learn like I did with a whipping as a child.
December 5th, 2005 at 4:20 pm
You just always notice the passive parents. I have 3 boys adopted with my partner and when they were younger we never let them get away with that crap. However it didn’t help when people nearby excused their behavior when we corrected them. Many times I disciplined my boys for something and someone said “that’s ok they are only kids” ANyway love your blog keep writing.
Kevin in Baltimore
December 5th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
Yes, Wal-mart and its evil twin, Sam’s Club are the worst places to shop. They have not only managed to force independent shops out of business in many small and large towns throughout the U.S., they have managed to make cheap materialism a virtue, and have fooled their own shoppers and workers to believe that they are the best place on earth to shop and work. You want low prices, well, you get low wages, too, and no service from these slack-jawed yokels, festooned with anti-union and pro-wal-mart pins and ribbons, and that stupid smiley face bandit. They have managed to gouge the avg. u.s. citizen out of their hard earned money as well as their jobs and wages. I will never again set foot in one of those stores.
The fact that the shoppers there have children who misbehave is annoying, but consider their upbringing, and the utter lack of discernment in their parents’ eyes.
Merry Christmas.
December 6th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
I like the flash header soooo nice.
December 6th, 2005 at 8:31 pm
I’m almost ashamed to say that when my son was very small he hated to come in the house when it got dark. I used the threat of “the trolls”. We lived in a pretty wooded area and I told him that the trolls lived in the woods and they would come out and get any little kids that didn’t listen. It worked until he was about six. Now that he is almost fourteen (GASP!) if he doesn’t mind me I take his MP3 and his Napster away. That is exactly like taking the phone away from me when I was his age. I think it’s a good trade off.
December 7th, 2005 at 10:18 pm
Yea I can relate in a big way. Having 3 kids myself I have resorted to some…ummm…not so conventional tactics. As parents you learn what works and what doesn’t. I think my kids are brats and yet people are always commenting to me on how good my kids are and what a great job I am doing. Strange…I think as parents I expect more from them than society as a whole does.
Good news, since you changed your blog URL, I can now access it and will be reading it a lot more!!!
December 7th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
I suppose when I see any kids happy and healthy it makes me smile, even when they are being brats. I work in a surgical recovery room and some of our kids come in from abuse, shaken baby sydrome, etc. Even though they may be brats, and believe me some of them are, it makes me smile because they are healthy but more importantly, they don’t come home with me!! It’s like getting to play Uncle Larry all the time and spoil them when they are sick, it’s the fun part of my job. PS I am a union stewart for SEIU and if the union president would see me shopping in WalMart she would break my legs.
December 8th, 2005 at 1:36 am
There you are!! Heheh sorry I haven’t been keeping up stud.. my job has been keeping me so busy that I hardly have time for blogging anymore.. and by the time I get to writing, I have no idea what to talk about cause my brain goes blank hehehe… Just wanted to let you know that I’m still here!!! :))
December 16th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
Hahhahaha!!! Jesus will go back on the cross if you don’t behave?? That’s a new one for this Catholic boy
Hmmm for St. Patrick’s day… I think you can’t really threaten kids with that holiday.. but you could threaten your future husband (whomever he may be) that you’re going to take away his beer