And you (Can you hear?) of tender years (And do you care?)
Can’t know the fears (And can you see?)
That your elders grew by (We must be free)
And so, please help (To teach your children)
Them with your youth (What you believe in)
They seek the truth (Make a world)
Before they can die (That we can live in)
song lyrics by Graham Nash
(The Mayor and Sheriff this past summer at the beach / Julie Cook / 2021
So we’ve all probably witnessed or read of the following tale…
And I’m probably already going viral as we speak…
So let me set the scene…
My husband and I ran into a nearby Target today as I needed to pick up
a few items.
This particular Target is larger than the one we had in our previous community.
I think they call it a super Target.
I really don’t always think bigger is better but that’s just me.
So while we were cruising up and down the various aisles, grabbing what we needed,
I heard a loud ruckus heading our way.
Loud laughter and what sounded like a basketball bouncing up and down on the floor.
What the heck???
My gaze was now fixed toward the end of the aisle as I was waiting to see
what this growing crescendo of noise was all about…
And that’s when I saw them…
5 young teens were kicking a soccer ball down, in and out, the various aisles.
Loud, pushing, shoving, laughing with one another while all acting a fool!
And that’s when it happened.
Just like a cat who bristles and puffs up at some approaching adversary,
I felt myself bowing up for a fight.
I turned my gaze toward these boys.
My eyes narrowed with a steely glare…and that’s when I felt that
familiar out of body voice ready to howl from a place from deep within…
I was in full blown honey badger teacher mode, ready to pounce.
And it only quadrupled when I saw the phone in one of the boy’s hand.
He was recording their reckless antics…
all the while, the soccer ball was kicked into a shelf full of
shaving cream cans…all of which came tumbling off the shelf,
loudly crashing to the floor.
Manager???
Can we say “MANAGER”???!!!!
Where in the world is some sort of manager????
What of parents?????
Where are the parents?????
This reminded me of my first year teaching…
it was the last day of school and the kids broke out all the
fire extinguishers while the principal locked himself in his office.
Bedlam…
And this was just that…bedlam.
The inmates were running the asylum.
They saw me seeing them–and my glare was now laser focused and
they knew it…as their laughter only grew.
This “incident” would no doubt hit their insignificant tik tok postings
showcasing just how fun it can be to go into a store and act like complete
immature horse’s ass while others look on in disgust.
So right when I was ready to spring into action, ready to snatch up some hooligans
by the scruff of their necks…
my husband’s voice broke my concentration...”Don’t even think about it!”
I felt his hand grab my shirt, nudging me in the opposite direction of the boys.
“Let’s go check out.”
He knows ‘teacher mode’ all too well.
So my thoughts today turn to parents.
I was a stupid teenager once.
I was also a parent to a teenager
I was also a high school teacher for 31 years.
Parents…please, please….teach your children well…
and if you do, no one will have to be that stupid unruly horse’s ass.
Train up a child in the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.
Proverbs 22:6
cookiecrumbstoliveby 
I have a dear friend who retired from teaching just a few years ago. She suffered a concussion when a group of unruly boys were behaving this way on the playground. These were elementary kids too. You are so right about parental involvement in raising children. I grew up in a different life. Today it takes two incomes to support a family and the pandemic should’ve been a wake up call. Parents were forced to work from home and actually have an opportunity to see what their children were capable of.
And some have unfortunately opted to keep the blinders on tight!!!!
Their parents are in mom’s basement playing Fortnite.
Or something else more unsundry
Todays world is not the world I grew up in. 😦
No it’s not
I work at a local county Children and Family Services office as a security guard (a whole different story in itself). This offices exists simply to take kids away from their abusive parents. (CFS… a warm-&-fuzzy term for the usual children protective services-CPS). You are correct.. parenting is important. Spawning offspring is a matter of reproduction and that’s the only thing nature requires of us humans to procreate the species. “Parenting” is a role that not all of us can perform or choose to perform… yet many think they do, yet don’t. CFS staff is over worked, underpaid for the social and moral and emotional baggage they accept with the job. Having had my academics in the Applied Behavioral Sciences provides a greater understanding in what they do.. which means I can do my job that much better trying to diffuse potentially violent and emotional parents. Just because someone can go through the motions to create kids does not mean they should.
I am daily reminded of a quote from the movie “Parenthood”. Keanu Reeves character was lamenting his own abusive father to a neighbor…
“You know, Mrs. Buckman, you need a license to buy a dog. You need a license to drive a car. Hell, you even need a license to catch a fish. But they’ll let any butt-reaming asshole to be a father.”
I hear you Doug—any guy can help make a baby—but only a real man can be a father…isn’t that how that goes—parenting takes a great deal!
Sex is but fleeting—the results are often lasting.
Seems folks just haven’t figured that out yet.
@Doug ,
Are you proposing to let politicians license parents? Wouldn’t that require responsible politicians?
What is the primary source of our discipline problems? In the past mothers stayed at home and raised their children. If mothers wanted to get along with their neighbors during the day — enjoy their company and share favors with them — then they had to discipline their children. No one wants undisciplined brats in their house.
What about the stability of marriages? We move a great deal more than we use to. So, the extended family does not help like it use to. Then there is the community, which in America use to mean churches, but our secular government has undermined such communities. The Federal Government provides welfare and spends more than twice as much as state and local government. So, lots of people look to the Federal Government when they used to look to each other for help. State and local governments, the people who run our schools, actively work to secularize children. That, more than anything, undermines the influence of churches.
Custom, the need to get along with our neighbors, rather than government once pressured parents to do their job. Now many of them don’t even know they have a job. They send their kids to school thinking that is where they are supposed to learn self discipline.
Anyway, what you are expecting is that the agency that created the problem, government, is going to fix the problem. That is so typical of Democrats.
Jeez, Tom.. you’re blaming the government for bad parenting?? By that measure we can blame Trump’s parents, hence the Eisenhower administration for Trump’s behavioral problems and our current chaos in democracy.
(…and don’t blame me for bringing up Trump yet again… YOU did this time.)
@Doug
I brought up Trump? Doug, you are obsessed.
No more or less than you about the guy.
@Doug
That is obviously untrue.
There’s a “truth” somewhere.. and you know of it?
@Doug
There is a name I use quite often.
Instead of obsessing on a man you have been convinced to hate, try getting to know a man renowned for His wisdom. You too may be convinced that He is the way, the truth, and the life.
Exactly the response I expected given I left it wide open for you. I’m not qualified to call into question another person’s spiritual faith (nor do I feel anyone else is either). You know I was referring to “human” truth… or lack thereof. I don’t think Julie wants us to take up her blog space with our sniping.
I was just watching— the volley of back and forth— and I think Tom was/ is merely redirecting our gaze to the real sense of comfort found in Christ and Christ alone —
But carry on, I’m just grabbing some more popcorn
That Tom is always trying to save humanity from itself through his spirituality, I will never deny nor debate, albeit his commitment to the cause is admirable.
Hear that, Tom? Just because you have chosen an immoral political person/ideology to follow doesn’t make you all bad. But then again… our national day of reckoning is near if your guy ends up riding in his triumphant chariot back to D.C. like the Caesar wannabe he thinks he is. The Bible, and prayer, will be all we have left.
@Doug
What human truth usually refers to is wisdom, the ability to discern properly between good and evil. Unless we begin with a reverence for the one true God, we won’t have much wisdom. So, think.
if you know nothing of the truth, why do you vote for politicians who want to impose their truth upon the rest of us?
I’m surprised you even asked that. You’d think you would know that. It’s called my perpetual faith in mankind. Until I know a person I accept them at face value as a fellow human being. In politics that means, if he/she can convince me of their intentions and can sell me in the righteousness of those intentions then I am likely to give them my vote. When that faith has been either “betrayed” by incompetency, deceit, or immoral (illegal) activity, then next election they do not get my vote.
In lieu of no candidates fitting my “criteria”.. I will vote for the lesser of two “evils”… and cast my (our) fate to the winds.
Faith, my son.
Not to begin an endless discussion on spirituality, Tom, but what has suggested to you that I am not all you are saying I “need”? Because I don’t profess it openly?
@Doug
Do you pay attention to your own words?
When you for politicians who insist upon imposing Socialism upon the rest of us, what do think you are doing? You are imposing your faith upon others.
Our Declaration of Independence asserts that God gives us our rights, and there is a good reason for that. The people who established the United States did not worship government.
It appears that your perpetual faith in mankind is just a euphemism for the worship of government. You are voting for Socialists. Socialism operates with this basic assumption. Government decides what rights we have, and government gives us our rights.
Last I was aware “We, the people,” gives us our rights and dictates government. Something change recently?
@Doug
We don’t make a big occasion out of Constitution Day. Instead, we celebrate Independence Day. That’s because the Declaration of Independence is our nation’s founding document.
The Declaration states our rights are God-given and that the purpose of government is to protect those rights. The Declaration provides the underlying purpose for and many of the principles use to frame our Constitution.
And that changes what to my last point?
@Doug
Do you define what is right and wrong or does God?
God believes what you believe because you believe it, right?
Read the Book of Judges. It is a horror story. What makes it one? Here is the theme of the book.
When God is not our King — when we each define for our self what is right and what is wrong — we can be horrible to each other and to ourselves.
Look at the godless fools you helped to put in office. They are so full of themselves the cannot even manage to APPEAR competent. Considering the politics of the dominant media, …..
“..the godless fools” I helped put into office?? And Evangelicals wonder why they are constantly being challenged. You can have your blog back now, Julie.
@Doug
Point to anything the Biden administration has done that indicates they care about anything except the accumulation of power.
Yep!
Actually, Trump’s issues began under the Truman administration.
And a sthe Mother of 4 boys…”Boys will be boys ” never held water with me. Nope…not excepted
Bless you!!!
I love your hilarious description of yourself – cat, beaver, and no, you were not the horse. 😀
No— I was the honey badger!!!!! 😎
I can picture the entire episode. You describe it vividly. Thank God for your husband and his level head. J.
Well…you know teachers…. especially old school high school teachers…I was all about the rules 😎
He probably kept me out of some sordid newspaper 🤣
In these time if you intervene the internet will turn against you for being a “Karen…” such a time…sigh.
The internet aka, the legion….
Good one
Sadly true— and Jim— I’m on the east coast, up early— and you are on the west coast, up either super early or super late— do you ever sleep?? 🤔🤗
Lol I do sleep
😴
=)