I don't like children.
I don't mind admitting this. It's nothing personal, I'm sure your children are lovely and that you're doing a wonderful job of raising them to be model citizens who will excel and buck the odds and build a better life than you have.
But I have to be honest. I don't know how people do it. I am not equipped for parenthood. (I'm well equipped to create a child, just not equipped to raise one). There has never been a day in my life where I've woken up and wanted a 50% mini me running around raising all kinds of hell.
And I am absolutely certain that parenthood is one of life's greatest joys, and I disparage no one for choosing to embark upon it, or having it thrust upon them and adjusting to it. I wish you all the best. You are doing what I am not capable of doing, and good for you.
I mention this because I spent part of one of my weekend days in line at a local metropark amusement ride. To celebrate being thin enough to fit on this ride, I embarked on a ride that as 50% something I didn't like (the feeling of falling) with 50% of something I did like (going ridiculously fast).
Needless to say, waiting in line for this ride entailed waiting in line with children of various ages. Though I do have siblings they are much older than me and, eventually, they moved out. So by and large, I grew up alone. I'm alright with that. Always have been.
I was also usually the smartest, or one of the smartest, kids in my class and, on top of that, learned the basic classroom survival skill of helping teach the kids who were the bullies whatever topic we were being taught during that portion of the day. Even as a kid, I was a teacher. Which my teachers actually appreciated. As such, I didn't face really any bullying.
As I think back on my childhood, I do recall occasionally playing war, but it was never close contact war, it was always fake guns/hunting each other across our sprawling public housing complex type war games. Even at that, it was pretty rare. And while, when standing in line, we would occasionally tease each other, it never progressed to the punching stage. (In fact, I had a couple of 5th grade friends who were terrific pickpockets;to this day I keep my wallet in the front pocket of my pants instead of the rear as a result.)
So I was startled, while standing in line for 45 minutes, at the amount of playful violence that took place amongst the groups of preteen boys that surrounded us in line, in a metropark, in one of my metro area's most affluent suburbs. It was something I noticed as well amongst boys at bus stops on my trips to India, but once you notice the sight of younger kids, not even brothers, necessarily but just friends of varying ages, punching, kicking and generally antagonizing each other to physical limits constantly, it's hard to tune it out.
All of this could be attributed to my oversensitivity to these things and my general dislike of children. But I get the perception that children are a magnitude more violent toward each other than they were a generation ago, and that does not bode well for us as a society. It makes me glad I stick to cats. And keep those cats indoors.
That said, the experience reminded me of this:
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MF_4EWSuzQY
