The shopping was utterly uninteresting. However, whilst I was doing my bit at the park part of the shops-park, a mum walked up with her rather fat two year old. Mum turned around, and I noticed that she had "armani" tattooed on her back in quite large letters.
Mum also had a pretty serious muffintop going. Not as bad as some of these, but certainly enough to avoid donning tight clothing. She had zero class. A complete slapper.
And then her fat kid ran off, and I heard her yelling, "Armani, Armani, come back here". Oh God, she named her kid Armani. In fact, judging by the lack of capitalisation on her tattoo, she named the little scrote "armani".
Mum was not dressed in anything remotely designer. I dress more elegantly when I walk into the backyard to degrease the bike. I dress more elegantly when I wade hip deep into a dam of liquid pig shit to unclog a filter on the pump. I dress more elegantly when I line up for a nude run after a few too many shots of tequila.
The mum and kid had matching ear rings too, and I think that one of the worst thing parents can do is inflict their own tasteless habits on their kids - like ear piercing before kindergarten. Almost as bad as a four year old with a mullet.
In the car ride home, I told J about the slapper, and Junior got all upset that we were being "so judgemental". I won't go into the details of our conversation, which consumed most of the ride home, but I did remind him that he commonly remarks that certain kids at his school are "speds" and that activities that he doesn't like are "gay".
You can't go through life without making judgements and choices. Got a choice between two cereals for breakfast? You have to make a judgement about which one to eat. Have to interview 20 people for a job? You have to make a judgement based on all sorts of factors, including how they present themselves. He told us off for being judgemental about her clothing, but this is a kid who spends half an hour doing his hair, and refuses to wear certain types of shoes in case they make him look "gay" in the eyes of other kids.
As I have said before, we should lift the voting age to about 40.
We also make a point of meeting all the parents of his friends. So far, we've been delighted by all that we have met - they're generally "people like us". That is, employed people who have standards (says I, unshowered, unshaven and sitting here in most dishevelled manner). Junior went to an underage concert last night (a battle of the bands type thing), and another parent took him and his mate. As J and I said to each other, if we didn't trust the parent of his mate, there is no way in hell he would have gone. We met the parents, made a judgement, and off he went with money in his pocket to have a good time. Fuck this "non-judgemental" business.
2 comments:
"Speds" - there's something I learnt today. I think it's kinda funny interesting that special education - designed as a politically correct phrase is now a term of abuse.
Our youngest turned 18 last week. So our kids are all adults. We still made a point of meeting the parents of their friends as we went along. They've all made pretty good judgments.
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