You're Not the Boss of Me!

I feel like a boob. Last night, as you all know, American troops nabbed the baddest dude in the world. And my blog was about a smurfing video game. Dumb. In my defense, I posted the blog about a half hour or so before I got the urgent text from Geo (interrupting my harvesting of his artichokes) to “turn on the news. Osama is dead!” At first, I misread it as “Obama” and almost cried while nearly punching myself in the face trying to find the remote. Whoops. Okay, I really don’t feel right going on at length about my feelings of what happened last night - seeing as how my blogs are mostly about shoes, booze, and shoddy advice columns - but I’ll just say this. September 11 was an unspeakable tragedy. And no one should get away with such abominable actions. The world seems like a safer place without him in it. I just kind of wish we had brought him back – alive – and could get to the bottom of what the eff is wrong with him.

Getting back to bidness. I'm just going to go ahead and apologize right off the bat. This post may - no, it WILL - offend some of my dear, wonderful readers. I'm sorry, but I gotta get this off my chest. My weekdays all start the same. I wait at my bus stop, across the street from an elementary school, and am bombarded with screaming children. Whatever. That's what my iPod is for - well, for that AND thwarting crazy people. And 9 times out of 10 I adore children. They are great. But today's walk home reached new heights of Other People's Annoying Children. I got off the bus and was accosted by like 6 of these pint-size protesters. They were PICKETING on my corner. They all were carrying handmade picket signs, and they stopped me to scream in my face. "HEY! DON'T LITTER!"

Okay 1) I haven't littered since, like, last week. 2) They spelled "litter" wrong on their freaky protest sign ("DONT LITER!"). It's called spell check, kiddies. And 3) Get off my jock, kids. I'm walkin' here.

I couldn't help but wonder where their parents were. It's freezing outside today, and protesting/picketing is kind of reserved for big things. Like ensuring constitutional rights, or fighting injustice, or demanding more cow bell.

Why are these kids NOT doing something like playing hide n' seek or bugging their parents? Why are they bothering ME?! Ugh.

Or, hey, here's an idea. Sell me some watery lemonade or some suspicious-looking brownies or something. I'll buy anything a kid is selling, and I'll gladly give them $0.50 for a snack as long as it means they aren't going to yell at me about their politics. Plus they're KIDS for crying out loud. Their biggest problem should be whether or not they are It during tag. I know that I have the luxury of not having kids of my own (or anyone else's for that matter) so my Judgey McJudgerson attitude is probably naive. I don't care. Listen, there's nothing wrong with doing a little neighborhood clean-up or setting up a little stand and selling lemonade with a side of childhood wisdom. But when you send/allow your kids to go out and aggressively bug ME, I'm not cool with that. In fact, I may litter just to show 'em who's boss.

Another very irritating thing that is never cute, no matter how many colors they use, is when kids make signs that read "SLO DOWN, THIS IS A NAYBERHODD!" I don't slow down when I see those signs. I speed up. Geo said that when he was in high school, he and his friends used to steal those signs and then burn them (I know, he's no saint either. But THAT'S funny). Kids can't tell me what to do. Sorry. And to let your bossy kids run around my neighborhood - which, by the way, is positively pristine and safe and lovely and does not need bossy 9 year olds policing the area - yelling orders is flat out tacky. They're kids. I don't like being yelled at by ANYone. So when little kids who have more teeth in the hands of the tooth fairy than in their mouths are the culprits, well, I'm just not okay with that. And according to society, I'm not even allowed to yell back at them.

I'm sure kids are great. Truth be told, I actually really love kids (most of the time). I'm obsessed with my nieces and nephews, and I feel like I just get kids for the most part. I love their easy senses of humor, their bright imaginations, and the way it's really easy to trick them into getting things for me so I don't have to get off the couch. They're wonderful. But they are simply not in charge of telling me what to do, or what NOT to do. And there's only one way to stop them, parents. Instead of putting your kids in a picket line, maybe encourage them to play with some dolls or build Lego houses or something not so, uh, activism-y.

Anyway, I'm glad I got that off my chest. I feel like it's a public service more than anything though. Because if an anonymous blogger can't tell you when your kids are irritating and trying to boss me around, who will?!