BAD!!

Years from now I hope I'll be able to look back on the last month and laugh, but at the present time I still get down right pissed off when I think about all the bullshit our youngest two kids have been doing this summer.

These two kids have been bad seeds for a long time now but recently they've turned the stupidity up to MAX.

At the beginning of the summer they started hanging out with a kid in "Angel or Devil's" class who lives a couple of blocks away. This was the first time we've ever let "Let's Go Crazy" and "Angel or Devil" go anywhere by themselves. Everything was working just fine for a while...and then the trouble started.

It began with the telephone. The kids were harassing this poor family at all times of the day. They'd call early in the morning and they'd call often. Why? To ask if they could come over. It got to the point where we had to tell them that they weren't allowed to use the phone without permission. They couldn't possibly care less! As soon as we turned our backs they'd be back on the phone again. No matter how many times we repeated this, they ignored it completely. I warned them that if they kept this kind of behavior up they wouldn't be welcome to play at their friends house at all.

The problems only got worse from there. Soon they started just leaving to go to their friends house without telling anyone. One minute they were sitting on the couch and the next they were gone. It was like a prison break! If their friend wasn't home they would roam the neighborhood looking for cat owners to talk to. It got to a point where we had to lock them in the house and lock up their bikes just to keep an eye on them.

One afternoon just after I'd arrived home from work Jules pointed out that there were a bunch of newspapers and flyers in our garbage bin. She thought that might be the reason we'd missed a few papers lately. She also suggested we phone the newspaper or the police to tell them that all of these papers were in the garbage. It's a good thing we didn't phone anyone because I found out later that our two kids had gone outside early in the morning, grabbed the bundle of papers and went around the block delivering them. The papers that we saw in the garbage were the ones that were left over.

Does this shit ever end? I hate to believe that my offspring can be so utterly stupid. All I can ask is WHY? Why would you do any of the stupid shit you do?

Through their routine of scouring the area for cats and cat owners they met a couple of people in the neighborhood. One was a nice lady (the kids called her The Cat Lady) who doesn't seem to mind having them around and actually enjoys doing things with them (this is the one good thing that came out of their mischief). The other was a 7 year old girl who has a cat and a trampoline. Both of these people were immediately added to the list of people to phone whenever nobody was looking.

Two weeks ago I had just gotten home from work when The Cat Lady arrived on our doorstep looking for the kids. She was trying to sort out a problem. It seems that she saw the kids walking a strange cat around on a leash shortly after she'd sent them home from her house. After a lot of questions it was determined that these kids had been somehow involved in a B & E at the 7 year old girls house!!!

Version one of the story, according to the kids, was this: They were walking home, minding their own business and as they were walking past the house in question 4 bigger girls were there and they went into the house via the upstairs window. These girls let the cat out at which point my kids put it on the leash.

At around 9:00 that night a policeman arrived on our doorstep looking for my kids. The story they gave him sounded a little different and a lot worse than the one they'd told us earlier.

They were walking home, minding their own business and as they were walking past the house in question 4 bigger girls went into the house via the upstairs window. They climbed a pole and got onto the roof where they pushed out the screen window and entered the house. Our kids followed them in the same way! While inside the house they played with the computer, hooked the cat onto the leash and phoned home (as we determined later after seeing the number on the call display). In addition to that the other girls were looking up some very inappropriate content online, playing with some musical instruments and eating snacks out of the fridge.

The policeman that came was great. He spoke to the kids and told them the possible consequences of doing something like that. He had a pretty good idea who these other girls were because of previous things they'd been involved in. When he was all finished I told the kids to thank the police officer for letting them off the hook this time. They stood there looking at the floor saying nothing at which point the officer said, "Are you going to say thank you or am I going to have to take you to jail?"

They couldn't say thank you fast enough then!!

So they spent the next week in the house, supposedly learning their lesson. We made them go to the house they'd broken into and explain what happened, apologize and offer their services for any chores that might need to be done. But it couldn't be that easy.

It turns out that these people are very religious (the father is a Baptist minister) and they thought the kids might benefit from a few Bible lessons in addition to some chores.

Although I'm not a fan of the church I have absolutely no problem with the kids being exposed to different beliefs. If they find something that they can believe in, that's great! But if I were a religious person trying to introduce small children to the Bible I don't think I would do it as punishment for misbehavior. What kind of message does that send?

Do something really bad = have to learn about God.

Whatever!!

So the first time the kids went over they picked some weeds and then talked about the story of Adam and Eve. Everything went fine and the kids came home with the homework of drawing a picture of something that God made.

The next time they went they did some dishes and acted like complete idiots. At some point "Devil or Angel" mentioned that God was a butthole. This did not go over very well at all.

Anyway they are done with that now.

Last week I got a call from a stranger telling me that he's been getting a lot of phone calls, every day, from our phone number. When he picks up all he hears is giggling on the line. You gotta love it when kids learn their lesson!! We finally had to remove the upstairs phone entirely and mount the downstairs phone on the wall where it is a little harder for short people to reach.

A few days ago a different neighbor came by the house because these two kids were throwing rocks at his window. Haven't we done this already!? Last year they broke the neighbors window by throwing rocks and this spring the police came by because they were throwing rocks at passing cars. They didn't break his window but he wanted us to know that if he sees them doing it again he will be calling the police. That's just what we needed, more good news to throw on the heap.

And finally there was last weekend.

Saturday night Jules and I went to see Dark Knight. We only get to go out by ourselves maybe once a year. Since Jules's Mom is visiting it was the perfect chance for us to get out. Right after we left the house the two younger kids started up. They locked themselves in the bathroom, dumped the laundry out, flipped the hamper upside-down and climbed on it to reach a tube of hair dye from the top shelf. Then "Let's Go Crazy" proceeded to dye "Devil or Angel's" hair pink. After this they continued their idiocy until Nana had to resort to locking them in their room.

These kids can't be trusted for a single second! The only way to make sure they aren't doing something wrong is to keep them in your sight constantly. This means no going to the bathroom, no talking on the phone, no using the computer, no watching TV. NOTHING. If you want to keep these two out of trouble you have to be prepared to spend your entire day following them around constantly.

Oh yeah! That girl from "Devil or Angel's" class, doesn't call anymore. Just as I'd predicted, they have been so much of a nuisance that their family doesn't want anything to do with our kids. "Well done kids!! In just one short summer you've managed to alienated all of the kids in the neighborhood who are in your age range!"

So where is "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" in all of this?

She's just fine and acting like a normal 10 year old, thanks for asking. She's been hanging out at the pool and chillin' with her friend. No police have been looking for her, no neighbors have been complaining about her and nobody has called trying to put an end to any telephone harassment.

SMS: Stupid Messaging Shit!

Everywhere you look these days you see zombified people holding their cell phones 6 inches from their faces furiously thumbing the shit out of their keypads. They enjoying the act of communicating via SMS (aka Text Messaging). You can find texters in stores, restaurants, at work, pretty much anywhere a cell phone can be used. They are easily recognizable by the pained look of concentration on their faces and the fact that they are completely oblivious to everything that is going on around them.

I hate cell phones to begin with and I especially don’t like text messaging. Personally I’d rather just phone a person than use SMS. It’s faster, it’s easier and it’s a much more clear and effective means of communication.

I could understand using text messaging under certain circumstances. Say you were meeting a friend at the Mall and were going to be late or something or maybe you want to remind someone to pick up some milk at the store. That would make sense. But to attempt to hold a conversation using text messaging seems foolish. Why spend 20 minutes typing back and forth, waiting for your texts to be received and their texts to arrive (there is no guarantee that texts will be delivered immediately) when you could call the person and get the same thing accomplished in under a minute?

The thing I hate about text messaging the most is the rudeness of it all. I can’t stand it when I’m in the middle of a conversation with someone and out of the blue they pull their phone out of their pocket because they’ve just received a text message. While I continue on with what I’m saying I see the person open up their phone and read their incoming message. At this point I’ve already concluded that they feel their text, although they haven’t even read it yet, is more important than whatever I’m saying. If the person is really obnoxious they will have no qualms about sending a reply to that text right then and there. Now they aren’t even pretending to be paying attention to what I’m saying. Why not just pick up a phone and start talking to someone while in the middle of a conversation? It’s pretty much the same thing.

There is another layer of rudeness associated with the above scenario. I’m not sure how to describe it so I’ll use an analogy.

Suppose you are sitting in a small room with a friend. You might be having a discussion or watching TV or eating dinner or anything, it doesn’t really matter. All of a sudden a stranger walks into the room and whispers something into your friends ear. Your friend whispers something back and the stranger leaves the room. Three minutes later the same thing happens again. Then again and again. If you are a normal person it wouldn’t take very long before you were thinking, “WTF??!”

I don’t see much difference between that scenario and hanging out with someone who is texting someone else, the only difference is that the stranger doesn’t physically come into the room and the whispering is done over the SMS network.

I decided to do a quick Google search on “text messaging etiquette”. The first result took me to http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/newswire-less/thefeature04.html and lo and behold the number one etiquette tip is:

Common courtesy still rules. Contrary to popular belief, composing an SMS while you're in a face-to-face conversation with someone is just about as rude as taking a voice call.

Pick An Era, Any Era

I like to fantasize about what it would be like to be born at different periods of time. I'm pretty sure most other people do the same. I do it all the time.

I've considered what it would be like to live in the ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, Colonial America, Civil War era America and pretty much any other time and place. I think I have finally decided which time period would be the most ideal time to be born.

If I could choose a time and place to be born it would have to be the latter half of the 1940's in the Mid-West of the USA.

It's the perfect era! You just miss out on all the fun of the Great Depression and WWII. But you are still born late enough to take advantage of indoor plumbing and electricity. You are born at the beginning of the baby boom. The Economy is soaring. A family can live a good life on a single income.

Kids still got to experience unbelievable freedom to enjoy their neighborhoods and the outdoors because society wasn't yet obsessed with the fear of killers, pedophiles and drug maniacs. Kids could play Cowboys and Indians without being reprimanded about how politically incorrect it is to use the term Indians or to depict violence perpetrated by either side. Kids got to play with toy guns! Hell, most kids probably had their own .22 rifles.

Then there are the movies. This was a time when going to the show was an all day event. You didn't cough up $15 to see a 89 minute show in a cramped room . You paid a nickel and saw a couple of cartoons, some newsreels, a serial or two and previews of upcoming shows followed by a movie that was at least 2 hours long and you saw this in an old time theater with a second level and balcony seating.

I also think radio programs would have been cool. I would totally be into tuning in to episodes of Superman, Little Orphan Annie or The Shadow. I can only imagine how cool it would be to see television for the first time as a kid.

You would get to experience the emergence of rock and roll. The entire Elvis phenomenon, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, the arrival of The Beatles. You would enter the summer of love in 1968 at university age. That Vietnam War thing could be a potential problem though!

Also in those days life wasn't so commercial. You weren't inundated with advertising 24 hours a day. Business was business and politics was politics. Somewhere along the lines those two entities merged into the business of politics or the politics of business, however you like to look at it. There were only a couple of channels to watch on TV and there were no video games, which means people used to go outside of their houses for reasons other than to shop.

Imagine going on a family vacation in those days. Jumping into the family car and traveling route 66 across America in the late 50's or early 60's. What an incredible trip that would be!

Sometimes I just get so sick of today. Instant communication. 200 channels of shit on TV. Satellite radio. Cellular phones. Crime. Violence. Greed. Pop music and Rap. Fear mongering. Video Games. Computers. "Made in China" written on 90% of my household items because it's the most affordable.

I could go on and on. I suppose every generation wishes they could go back and live in a previous time.

I wonder what era a person who was actually born in the late 40's would choose as the ideal time to live?

New Friend In The Hood

Last week the kids made a discovery. They were riding their bikes around the neighborhood when the came across one of "Angel or Devil's" classmates. It turns out that she lives just two blocks over from us! You can almost see her house from our back door!

This is great news!

I'll call the new kid Bangs because up until now her bangs have been her most prominent feature. When I came home from work the other day "Angel or Devil" and "Let's Go Crazy" were hanging out with Bangs and playing some video games. This gave me a good chance to check out this new intruder.

She seemed fairly normal from what I could tell. You can actually have a conversation with her, which is a real bonus! She gets the OK in my books.

The kids hung out for a while until Bang's mom called to tell her it was time to go home. Since we were heading out to the store anyway, the kids and I walked with her back to her house.

I met her parents and they too seemed to be pretty normal and down to Earth. Her Mom also said, "The kids can come over anytime."

This is what I was waiting to hear! She really doesn't know what she's getting into!

It looks like we might have a good thing going here. A handy, low-maintenance friend just down the road with normal parents who don't mind having the kids come over. For me, it's a dream come true.

My only fear is that my little troop of maniacs will queer the deal for us.

My kids don't have a very solid grasp of social etiquette. They assume that anybody would want them to visit at anytime. They see absolutely nothing wrong with heading over unannounced and asking if they can come in or even stay for dinner. No matter what time of day it is, they always want to go to her house. I know if they are ever out of sight that they will bolt to see what Bangs is doing or to see if they can come over. This is after just 4 days!

Another possible problem is the fact that my kids tend to travel in packs. Although this should just be a relationship between Bangs and "Angel or Devil" the other kids insist on going over too. Maybe they're afraid that someone might fart and they'll miss it!! I know I would get a little tired of having 2-3 kids coming over to my house all the time.

Additionally, my kids are becoming specialists in the art of telephone harassment. A couple of weeks ago "Angel or Devil" got invited to a Birthday Party. As is usually the case the invitation had the phone number listed for the party girl. So one day Jules answered the phone and it was the Birthday Girl's mom calling to complain about the dozen or so calls she'd been getting daily from "Angel or Devil". Sneaky bugger!

Now we can only hope that the family of Bangs won't be subjected to the mass calling treatment. "Angel or Devil" called at 9am last Saturday, which I'm sure was really appreciated. I also know that she has called and left messages for Bangs too. I'm hoping that she at least had something normal to say and didn't just start rambling on about buttholes, pee pees and farts or any of her other favorite topics.

We've got a good thing going here and I don't want the kids to ruin it by being too aggressive. We have to ease into this situation. We don't want to scare them away, after all. Maybe we need to send "Angel or Devil" over on some solo missions to ease the burden on Mother of Bangs. Also we should reciprocate a little more by inviting Bangs to play at our house every now and then.

It's great to see "Angel or Devil" with a friend in the neighborhood though. Now we just need to find a friend for "Let's Go Crazy" in our vicinity.

Family Camping Trip: Day Four

We went home.