Fucking Kids

I can’t even being to imagine how often I’ve heard someone exclaim “fucking kids!” Still, I find it odd that I so frequently use the same phrase and even odder that I don’t feel like an old lady when I say it. It blows my mind that kids are so out of control and that parents can do NOTHING to stop them.

Take, for instance, a certain young person with whom I am well aquainted. A scant fifteen years old and dating an eighteen year old pot smoking retard, who will more than likely make his career in break-and-enters. The little snot-rag can’t even be bothered to make eye contact with you when you’re speaking to him, yet somehow this little girl thinks that it is not fair for us to judge him? I graduated high school. I attended post-secondary schooling. I have dated every kind of loser and cum-smear out there. I don’t know him personally, but I know him nonetheless. He’s a loser. He’s trouble. And he is going to take you far away from where you want to be. By the way, sweetheart, the WORLD is going to judge you and him by your individual behaviours and by the company you keep. If you want to be around trash, expect that you will be treated the same as trash. You’re only fifteen and there is only one thing an eighteen year old boy wants with you, and it sure as hell isn’t your “keen fashion sense” or your “zest for life.” Once he’s got what he wants out of you, you’ll be tossed out on your ass. You can bet your life on it.

Teenagers are skipping classes, bugging off, causing trouble and lying to their parents and there seems to be nothing that parents can do anymore to keep their kids in line. You can’t smack them. That’s child abuse. You can’t ground them, since it means staying home from work to enforce the grounding. Forced labour, perhaps? Military school? Let them get away with anything they want until they become the problem of the youth justice system? It’s absolutely bullshit. When I was a kid, my parents made damn good and sure that when I was being punished I KNEW that I was being punished. I had zero privileges – no phone, internet, television – and none of the comforts that I’d come to enjoy. There was no stereo in my room, merely the crappy alarm radio that I used to get myself out of bed and when I wasn’t working, I was in my room. I could read a book or sit there bored and those were my only options. The extra tasks that were handed to me as part of my punishment had to be done to the highest standards and if they were, I was going to be redoing them and receiving more to do. There was no getting away with poor grades or lying. That was it. I realize that I wasn’t always the perfect child, but I was more or less mindful of my parents.

I was always good at coercing teenagers into doing what I wanted them to. When I was a kid, it was getting the babysitter to let me eat junk and buy me candy. When I was a teen, it was doing what I wanted to do instead of what they wanted to do. In my early twenties, I could coach them and get fantastic results. Now though, I feel like I’ve entered the fogie-zone and that I’ll always be one of the adults. I wish that I could make some of these kids see how very senseless they are and the fact that I can’t really bothers me and really worries me. There is a lot more out in the world to hurt a kid than there was even ten years ago when I was a teen, or maybe I’m just more aware of it now that I’m a little more mature.

Fucking kids! The little shits made me old!